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NINETTE 


AN IDYLL OF PROVENC 


BY 

THE AUTHOR OF 44 VERA,” ETC. 




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jU-^i — / 'L lJ. — <£0 



LIBRARY 

OFTHH 

$UP.‘. COUNCIL, 
SO.*. JURISDICTION* 


NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1888 


P/?3 
33 3^3 

ru 


Authorized Edition . 


ir::ehaiigt- 

lllwary a| Supreme Council AuM&U* 
Aue lO> 1940 


In compliance with current 
copyright law, LBS Archival 
Products produced this 
replacement volume on paper 
that meets the ANSI Standard 
Z39. 48-1984 to replace the 
irreparably deteriorated 
original. 

1991 
























































































NINETTE. 


CHAPTER L 

THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT. 

C’est le Midi vermeil, lascif et plein de rSrea, 

Dans son cadre dore par les soleils couchants, 

Avec son bercement de rayons sur les greves, 

Derriere les rameaux tourmentes et penchants* 

Denx arbres envoles dans le baiser des seves, 

S’ajoutent a la paix glorieuse des champs, 

Tordus comme des faux, potis comme des glaive^ 

Au-dessus des ravins d’ou s’elevent des chants. 

Tout la-bas, dans lanue, un gonflement de boule. 

A droite, un filet d'eau scintille et so deroule 
Comme un ruban tombe des ailes d’Ariel ! 

Et dans le charme exquis l.’eppace au loin s^zure, 

Et rougeoie, et flamboie, et s’efface, k mesure 
Que le soir lent descend les etages du ciel. 

Dans le Midi. Clovis Huguks. 

Qui 1^,-bas sanglote et regarde ? 

Eh! c’est la veuve du tambour! 

Bebangejl 

The sun of an April day was setting behind the 
Esterels, and the long lines of white road between 
the bastions of Antibes and its railway-station were 
crowded. The dust raised by the carriages and by so 


2 


NINETTE . 


many passing feet hung over the road in a cloud through 
which the level sun-rays shone as through a glittering 
veil. The hedges were all of roses, except where now 
and again a bush of lilac shook its sprays, or where 
the iris opened its white spikes under the shadow of 
some aloe that thrust blue-green sheaths far into the 
roadway. To the left a line of cypress-trees, ragged 
and hoary, showed sombre against the setting sun. 
Beyond the station, the ground rises again, and from 
thence you can catch a glimpse, now of the fortified 
town with its two big towers, and now of the Square 
Fort of Vauban, which serves as a foreground to the 
matchless panorama of the mountains. 

The second battalion of the 111th regiment had 
just returned from Tonquin : that is to say, as much 
of it as sword and fever had given back to its country. 
All Maritime Provence was stirred at its coming, for 
military life in France is no longer a nomadic one. 
Corps d'arm&e are stationary within certain regions, 
and a regiment which has been long in the territory 
naturally gathers its recruits year after year from the 
same towns and villages. It becomes a sort of National 
Guard, and as such the women have a vested interest 
in it. 


THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT 


8 


Antibes was to-day in gala, and stacks of white 
tents within the enceinte of the Square Fort were in 
readiness to receive the returning force. So, alas ! 
were the ambulances : and many ghost-like men had 
to be conveyed on their stretchers to the military 
hospital. The narrow streets were crowded. Not only 
did the inhabitants feel it right to show their sympathy 
with the troops, and also to shoot at pleasure as it flies, 
but groups of strangers had evidently started for An- 
tibes as soon as the day began to whiten behind the 
Bordighera shore. Some went thither to spend a 
holiday, some to gratify a passion for drums and 
trumpets, some to greet a husband, a son, a brother, 
or a sweetheart, and some, alas ! to weep over the 
unreturning brave. 

From Nice came General Thiery and his staff, and 
the Prefect of the Maritime Alps ; from Grasse came 
the sub-prefect and the Procureur de la Repullique ; 
from Monte Carlo some sight-seers ; from Cannes the 
mayor, and some doctors; even the fortress of Ste. 
Marguerite sent two subalterns, while Yallauris gave 
its potters, and La Gaude its vine-dressers. In fact, 
from the furthest hill-villages of this romantic under- 
cliff of Maritime Provence there flocked those wives 


4 


NINETTE. 


and mothers for whom the military expeditions of 
France meant simply ‘lives of men.’ 

The sea-gate and the streets were alike garlanded 
with flowers; a triumphal arch spanned the Rue Vau- 
ban, tricolour flags fluttered round the fountain, every 
cornice bristled with palms and laurels, in front of 
the Hotel de Ville a band played martial strains, and 
Chinese lanterns hung in festoons : yet the review of 
the 111th regiment was at best a melancholy function. 

The nine thousand spectators gathered round the 
parade-ground were really more sorry than proud. The 
second battalion had been decimated. Nine officers, 
and three hundred and six privates had bitten the 
foreign earth they once set forth to conquer. There 
were bystanders accordingly who ventured to hope 
that when next an ill-advised and expensive war 
should be started for the pecuniary benefit of Monsieur 
Ferry, Monsieur Wilson, and the other rulers of 
France, the scene of that campaign might be laid in 
some district less unhealthy than this Tonquin, which 
had certainly beaten Frenchmen by fever and dysen- 
tery rather than by arms. 

‘ It makes one’s flesh creep,’ cried a woman, 6 to 
look at such a collection of spectres.’ Then by degrees, 


THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT 


5 


when a respectful silence had succeeded to the roll- 
ing of the drums, the comments became louder. ‘ This 
war has been futile/ said one man ; ‘trade had long 
been so depressed/ said another, ‘ that there was really 
no need to disorder our finances further’; ‘France 
is ridiculous in the eyes of Europe/ cried a third ; 
4 this government of adventurers has added to 
the expenses of the country over 1,200,000,000 
francs/ said a fourth ; ‘ which is worse than in 
the worst days of the Empire/ groaned a fifth ; while 
numberless malcontents averred that the factions at 
home did but render more intolerable that general 
sense of disorder and distrust which Republican in- 
stitutions keep alive in what its leaders are pleased 
to term ‘a laborious and much-enduring nation/ 

It was in vain to-day that the sun shone on bright 
uniforms and brave men, since the enthusiasm was 
simply of a painful description when Colonel Bourdon 
addressed the troops. 

6 Soldiers of the second battalion, when, two years 
ago, on the eve of your departure, you made your 
adieux to the flag, I promised you that on your return 
the colours would go out to meet you. It was be- 
cause I was sure of you. Here it is I let your 


6 


NINETTE. 


standard have your first glance and your first 
homage. We will salute it together, and, in saluting 
it, you may hold your heads high. The regiment is 
proud of you ! Present arms 1’ 

There was, however, prolonged applause when some 
unarmed invalids limped forward to take their places 
in the ranks. One schoolmaster of democratic prin- 
ciples did indeed shout 6 Vive la Republique /* but no 
answering cry was raised : only a loud sob came from 
an excited, but grief-stricken crowd. The burst of 
emotion became contagious. Bronzed faces looked 
pale, cries of ‘ peccaire !’ (alas ! the pity of it) mingled 
with the eager ‘ te ’ and of the spectators, and it 
was not till much later that any exhilaration was 
visible. 

Then, indeed, before the caf6 doors, cigars were 
lighted, and you might hear men fighting their battles 
over again, while they drank to wives and sweet- 
hearts, or watched the preparations for illuminating 
the town. 

Daylight faded at last, and the long lines of col- 
oured lanterns began to tell, the crowd all the time 
either surging to and fro, or gathering before the doors 
of the Hotel-de-Yille, the barracks, or the house of 


THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT. 


7 


the Commandant. There a young, wounded officer 
was especially noticed as he limped from its door, 
some cheering him for his bravery, others saluting in 
him the son of that yet braver general who in 1870-1 
fought at Le Mans and Auvours. 

Many strangers, trusting to the latest train, were 
determined to see the last Roman-candle burnt out, 
the last mazagran drunk, and the last rocket fall hiss- 
ing into the basin of San Roch. Only the visitors 
from the distant hills dared not tarry so late. 

Accordingly, as the sun set, a man, a woman, and 
a young girl might be seen to issue from the Porte- 
de-France, and to strike across the sloping fields, till 
they reached the high-road, near the level crossing of 
the railway. 

Their mutual relationships, as they trudged on 
together, w r ould have puzzled an observer. Were 
they merely neighbourly units, come down from 
the same little distant pays , and returning home 
together because, as the darkness gathered on the 
inland roads, they would need each others escort? or 
was there really some tie of kinship between three 
people so glaringly unlike ? 

The man, who carried a big, green umbrella, walked 


8 


NINETTE. 


first as the pioneer of the party. lie had that strongly- 
marked Celtic type that may still be noticed in the 
hill-districts where Deceates and Oxybians long held 
out against Greek colonists and Roman conquerors* 
Above the middle height, blue-eyed, and with a thin 
neck and a long upper lip, there was in his expression 
a something at once melancholy and secretive. Hugues 
Firmin’s eyes seemed sunk in a net- work of wrinkles ; 
his lean fingers expressed avarice, and it was evident 
that this was a man struggling to obtain the bare 
necessaries of existence. And in the struggle there 
was nothing brave : the step being without spring, 
as the rather thin and close-pressed lips were without 
smile or song. He walked on in the silence which 
peasants never feel to be embarrassing. Just as a 
peasant does not think of giving his arm to a woman 
except during his wedding-march, so does he never 
feel it' incumbent on him to entertain a companion. 
It would seem as if his life-long duel with the soil 
and with the elements had left him few ideas, and no 
wish to communicate those which he has. 

The farmer s dress was not very shabby, be it 
remarked. He wore high-low shoes, dark trousers, 
which fitted rather close to the knee, and which were 


THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT. 


9 


turned up round his shoes on account of the dust. 
The coat, evidently older than the rest of the suit, 
was shiny at the seams, and was also dragged out of 
shape by the weight of the pockets. As he walked, 
he meditated on the crowd which they had just left 
in Antibes, and he settled in his own mind that the 
presence of foreigners was the only thing that could 
counterbalance the bankruptcy of the land, since 
strangers create a demand for other articles than the 
com and wine and oil which have ceased to be 
remunerative* 

The woman, who walked in the middle of the road- 
way, frowning at the level sunlight, was in marked 
contrast with Hugues Firmin. If he was grave, and 
lean, and cold, she was brawny and high-coloured, and 
in her loud voice and heavy step you could detect both 
an imperious will and a greater independence of mind 
and position. The mouth, with its unbroken rows of 
very regular teeth, was that of a person still almost 
young, but the scanty hairs on the brown and wrinkled 
forehead spoke of middle-life. She had on a black 
bodice, a short dress made of a brownish-yellow 
cotton, with a checked apron over her ample knees, 
and she carried a straw hat over her arm. 


2 


10 


NINETTE . 


Behind the man, and to the left of this formidable 
matron, there tripped a young girl. This figure at least 
was small and youthful enough, yet, slight as Ninette 
Firmin was, the little cotton petticoat that she wore 
seemed to be all too narrow and too short for its wearer. 
It was of a strange greenish hue, while her apron was 
of a dark blue stuff, and her stockings of a faded red. 
The cropped hair and the flat and narrow hips, like 
the lean olive-coloured hands, were all more suggestive 
of a boy than a girl, yet the poise of the head on the 
neck was graceful, and the little, pale face was beau- 
tiful both in feature and expression. In truth, one 
glance into Ninette’s meek eyes assured you that you 
had before you, in this slight and half-starved body, a 
womaD, with a faithful woman’s heart. 

They had all reached the top of the hill, when, at 
the opening of a road into the olive-woods, the man, 
who was the leader of the party, called a momentary 
halt in their march. A dispute, probably begun before 
they had left Antibes, was reopened now between 
the elders of the party. From its tone it became 
evident that, ill-matched as they seemed to be, the 
speakers were really man and wife, and, as such, 
entitled to argue about the price of the gardiano 


THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT 


11 


of lamb which they had eaten at the ‘Mule Noir.* 
The young girl, who was either tired or weary of 
the subject, or had matters of her own to reflect upon, 
seated herself on a low wall at a little distance from 
them, and began to pull the yellow core out of the 
long cream-coloured sheath of an arum which grew 
at her feet in the grass. Her father at last, having 
been apparently worsted in the argument about the 
bill, turned to her, and said, 

‘ What did Mother Bellaud tell you about her son?’ 
‘ She said nothing to me except that his letters must 
all have gone astray, since she had had no news for 
four months of one who was here to-day, safe and well.’ 

‘It is more likely that he never wrote them, for he 
was never worth much — did you see him?* 

‘ Who V 

‘Felicien Bellaud V 

‘ Yes, I saw him, and the big Norine too, crying to 
break her heart because her piachineto ’ (little one) 
‘will never return.’ 

‘ Did you see Noel Cresp V 

Ninette nodded her head, and then added, 

‘ Yes : and did you see that his brother-in-law and 
Rose Fayet were there?’ 


12 


NINETTE . 


4 Yes, I heard that idiot of a schoolmaster crying, 
Vive la Republique ! by all the world as if there had 
been no war, and as if there would be no taxes! In 
fact, it was hardly worth while for us to have gone so 
far to-day, to eat so dearly, to pay so much, and to 
see so little.’ 

4 So little ! but I call it so much/ cried Ninette, 
descending now from her seat on the wall. 4 1 call 
it a great deal to have seen the sea, and the wreaths, 
the shining bayonets, and the standards, and all our 
men again/ 

4 Hold your tongue !’ cried Madame Eugenie Firmin ; 
4 you can always find it when it is to contradict your 
father/ 

Ninette gave an odd, sidelong glance at the speaker, 
and then seemed glad to continue in silence the long 
walk through the dust which was to take the party to 
the mills at Clausonne. From that point they were 
to drive home by the Valbonne road to Le Rouret, a 
farm situated rather nearer to Grasse than to the town 
of Le Bar, to the canton of which it however really 
belonged. 

As this trio go silently through the woods and 
along the hedges on which the quince and medlar 


THE RETURN OF THE REGIMENT. 


13 


blossoms hang such a delicate snow, let me tell you 
how Hugues Firmin, the farmer of Le Rouret, and 
Ninette, his only daughter, come to have this very 
unpleasant woman in their company. 


CHAPTER n. 


TWICE MARRIED. 

How the poor world is pestered ! 

Troilus and Cressida , v. 1. 

Alas ! she is the guardian angel of Le Rouret, for 
eight years after the death of his first wife, Hugues 
Firmin married Eugenie Sube. She was then in her 
fortieth year, and rumour averred that she had had a 
stormy youth in Nice. That youth, whatever might 
have been its features, was however long since past, 
and its events had all had time to grow legendary 
before she returned to her native place of Le Bar. 
She was then reported to be rich. She had been 
long in service, and, though service is commonly said 
to be no inheritance, Eugenie had somehow inherited 
something from some one in Nice, and, if in their 
blunt fashion the neighbours did say of her ‘that 
she “ had lost a shoe ” ’ in service, she could at least 
say of herself that she had gained a well-lined purse. 


TWICE MARRIED. 


15 


Money was much needed at that moment to keep 
the bailiffs from the door of Le Rouret, and so, to serve 
his private ends, Hugues Firmin, widower and peasant 
proprietor, proposed to a woman who had more than 
one dark page in her history: and she, to serve her 
private ends, accepted him and went to live on a 
farm ; rural life being the thing for which she was 
least fitted. 

Little Ninette was just nine years old when this mis- 
fortune happened. It was really a great misfortune 
that then befell the farmer’s only child, and his pur- 
blind, bed-ridden, old mother, the widow Petronilla 
Firmin. They, helpless creatures as they were, never 
could earn any money. What was worse they could 
not even do the work of the farm, and the moment 
that it becomes a question of hired labour the 
doom of a peasant proprietor is as good as sealed, 
because wages keep rising although markets keep 
falling. Labour is scarce and dear, and those owners 
only are prosperous who are not only able to till the 
farm with their own hands, but who are able to sup- 
plement the gains they can get off their fields by 
industrial wages. Wages the factories of Grasse might 
have offered to the farmer’s family had they only been 


16 


NINETTE ; 


of the age or bad the strength to avail themselves of 
them, but this was not the case with Ninette and her 
grandmother, and Hugues was right when he declared 
that he really had no luck. The seasons had long 
been unfavourable, the olive-trees gave little or no 
fruit, and yet he had been obliged to take a servant, 
only a poor hump-backed orphan it is true, who 
received little more than his keep, but who none the 
less added a fourth mouth to the daily consumption ; 
in short, the hour of the farmer’s necessity became 
that of the devils opportunity! And Firmin married 
again for money. 

His first wife, Eliza Rosingana, he had married out 
of a perfume factory at Grasse. She was a half Italian 
girl, one whose father, a Piedmontese workman, was 
a stranger, and therefore unpopular in the neighbour- 
hood. Rut, on the other hand, her mother, Valentine 
Ghiz, was the youngest sister of the best-known man 
in the arrondissement , of Anfos Ghiz, the wizard- 
doctor, who lived within five minutes’ walk of Le 
Bar. Poor Eliza’s married life with Hugues Firmin 
was such a short one that she left little traces of 
herself behind her, except in the person of her infant 
Ninette ; but the Ghiz family were both able and 


TWICE MARRIED. 


17 


willing to recall their niece’s memory, and to urge 
the claims of her child when Hugues Firmin an- 
nounced a second marriage. Should Hugues become 
the father of a second family Anfos Ghiz, and the old 
sister who kept house wfith him, meant to look after 
little Ninette’s interest in the farm of Le Rouret ; in 
fact, his courtship and marriage bred very ill-feeling 
between the farmer and the natural guardians of 
Eliza Rosingana’s child, and it was only on account 
of old Petronilla’s infirmity that they had not insisted 
on removing Ninette from the house where a stranger 
was to enter and to rule. 

All the neighbours shook their heads over Firming 
choice. The Subes, it is true, did belong to the district, 
but then this Eugenie had been all her life person- 
ally a stranger to it: no Franciot, they said, could 
be more so, and, what was worse, her family did not 
inspire confidence. Her cousin, Pierre Sube, the richest 
broker of the neighbourhood, was its greatest tyrant. 
He was the leader of the ultra-democratic party, so 
intimate with the powers that be that he was always 
able to punish those who opposed him, and so rich 
that, in a society composed of persons corrupting or 
easy to be corrupted, he could always buy the supre- 


18 


NINETTE. 


mac y he loved. He was, unfortunately, as well known 
in the district for his immorality as for his harshness, 
so much so that it was held to be a great risk when the 
farmer of Le Rouret united himself by marriage with a 
man so much more likely to ruin him than to help him. 

Narrow and mercenary as were the views of his 
neighbours, Firmin’s first marriage had ever been 
spoken of by them with contemptuous pity, as that of 
a union between hunger and thirst ; but this second 
choice of his was generally felt to be a depraved one, 
inasmuch as all or any of the misfortunes of virtue 
are preferable to the fortunes of vice. 

The French peasantry, it should be said, are not 
dramatic in their marriage code ; lovers of old customs, 
of old wine, of stale bread, and of prohibitive tarifs, if 
they are apt to view all strangers with suspicion they 
are doubly inclined to do so in the matter of their 
marriages. No accidents, no mysteries, no light and 
shade, so to speak, are considered desirable by them in 
an engagement which refers much more directly to the 
purse than to the heart. Eugenie Sube might be rich, 
but her fortune, like her adventures, was liable to 
exaggeration. It was at best an unknown quantity. 
Yet, had Firmin been in love with his intended, the 


TWICE MARRIED. 


19 


attitude of his first wife’s family and of the public 
towards her might have been easier to bear. But he 
was not in love with her ; he was only a middle-aged 
man oppressed by sordid cares, who snatched at a 
means of removing them, but who dreaded to an- 
nounce his intentions to his mother. Returning late 
one evening and with marks of heavy drinking about 
his step and voice he walked into the kitchen where 
old Petronilla lay and told her abruptly that he was 
going to be married at Michaelmas. When she asked 
him if he had reflected well before doing this he 
replied that as his wife had money he hoped to be 
able to tide over the coming winter. 

6 Whom has God sent into this house V next asked 
the old woman, as her thoughts wandered from little 
Ninette herding turkeys in the long grass, to the poor 
young Italian mother, dead some eight years ago, and 
now lying in the cemetery with a ragged wreath of 
black beads dangling from the small wooden cross at 
her head. 

4 Eugenie Sube of Le Bar is willing to take me,’ 
replied the farmer laconically ; and then he walked out 
of the room before he had time to hear Petronilla say, 

‘Unless the Lord keep the house money and 


20 


EINETTE. 


strength both go for nought. God send us peace!’ 

Michaelmas was only ten days distant, but the 
farmer did not set about any great preparations for 
his new way of life. The disorder of his farm and 
gralssier were as great as ever, the hams that dangled 
from the kitchen ceiling were as thickly crusted with 
wasps and blue-bottle flies, the rare window-panes 
remained as opaque with dirt ; but he did remove from 
the wall over his bed a gaudy piint of St. Elizabeth, 
which, as having belonged to Ninette’s mother, he 
handed over to his daughter’s keeping. 

On Michaelmas Day the marriage was celebrated, 
not in the parish church of Le Bar, but, as Petronilla 
afterwards learned to her horror, only at the Mairie. 
For this civil ceremony the reason assigned was the 
advanced opinions of the Sube family. Pierre Sube, 
the broker, certainly lived at open war with the cure ; 
be was ready to vote for the suppression of the Con- 
cordat, and he often represented to his listeners that 
the forty-three to forty-five millions of francs annually 
paid to forty thousand priests were at once an injury 
to the purse and an insult to the understanding of 
Frenchmen. There were, however, malicious persons 
who offered another explanation for the omission of the 


TWICE MARRIED . 


21 


religious ceremony at Eugenie Sube’s wedding. It 
was darkly hinted that the bride’s difficulty in obtain- 
ing her ticket of confession was an obstacle far more 
real than the scruples of the Sube family, or than 
their objections to the payment by the State of the 
legitimate cost of the worship of those fifteen millions 
of French men and women who belong to the Catholic 
Church, and who either believe in the truth or simply 
in the necessity of Catholicism. 

Whether on account of the civil ceremony or of 
the unpopularity of Sube the broker, this elderly bride 
had but a small train when she appeared to take 
her place beside her husband’s hearth. One or two 
neighbours did drop in to look at her, but the poor, 
old, blind woman, who could only judge of her new 
daughter-in-law by her step and voice, had but small 
pleasure in that wedding-feast. Its few guests were 
not the persons of the best reputation in the district, 
but they talked loud, and ate and drank gladly, 
while Ninette, hiding behind the old woman’s bed, 
was hardly sorry that she had been overlooked, and 
not given any place at the table of the bride and 
bridegroom. 

When I add that, within six months of her arrival 


22 


NINETTE . 


at Le Rouret, Madame Eugenie was brought to bed of 
a fine boy, which she christened Pierre, and that poor 
Ninette was kept from school that she might wait on 
the small morsel of humanity who had made such a pre- 
mature appearance in a world of tears and taxes, I 
shall have said enough to indicate the setting of rough 
living and low thinking in which my little heroine 
grew up. 

Matters since then had not gone smoothly at Le 
Rouret, where it was evidently la frema die puorta li 
braja* Madame Eugenie’s temper is less good now than 
when she first married, for she has lost her little boy by 
the small-pox, a disease which is often endemic in those 
Provent^al villages where the schoolmaster does not too 
often go abroad. Nor does she like a country life ; 
and she does not work on the farm, because no one who 
is not to the manner born will carry dung on their 
back, or spread it on the land with their fingers. 
Her energies are generally spent in overworking 
Ninette, but to-day the girl's father has for once 
interfered. To-day, this ‘ bel jour de Dioul as the 
peasants say, happens to be Ninette's seventeenth 
birthday, and she has been allowed to go to Antibes, 

* The woman who wore the breeches. 


TWICE MARRIED. 


23 


whither, on errands of joy or sorrow, so many of her 
neighbours have turned their steps. 

A holiday depends for its success on three things : on 
the hearts of the holiday-makers, on the weather, and 
on the commissariat. The sunshine of to-day has been 
unclouded, the food at Antibes has been the subject 
of a violent quarrel, and yet Ninette has enjoyed the 
excursion. Her holidays are in general restricted to 
New Year’s Day and Corpus Christi Day, for, though 
she is no longer poor little Pepe’s slave, she cooks 
and spins, and knits, and hangs out the linen she has 
washed on ropes fastened among her cherry-trees. 
She hews firewood, binds faggots of vine-sticks, feeds 
the lamb, draws water, rears turkeys, dries fruit, and 
picks violets on her knees for hours in the frosty 
morning ; while the half of her food and the whole of 
her leisure have to be given to her infirm old grand- 
mother. To the Maigrana, as Ninette calls her, she is 
indispensable, for the two women are bound to each 
other by their mutual sufferings, their mutual depend- 
ence, and by their terror of Hugues Firmin’s second 
wife. They make each other a thousand confidences, 
and to-day the hours of her grand-daughter’s absence 
must have seemed longindeed to the infirm old peasant. 


CHAPTER III. 


UNDER THE STARS. 

Toi ! demande au monde nocturne 
De la paix pour ton cceur desert : 

Demande une goutte k cette urae, 

Demande un chant a ce concert. 

Victor Hugo. 

As they came within sight of Clausonne, Madame 
Eugenie put on her big hat, wiped her brows, 
smoothed back her hair, and stepped forward with an 
air of expectant power. Ninette on the contrary 
slackened her pace, and was therefore the last to 
reach the door of the mill before which there stood 
not only the miller, but a small wagonette with a 
white horse in its shafts and a man in a long coat. 

In the latter Madame Eugenie recognised her 
cousin, Pierre Sube, the broker, who had engaged to 
drive the whole family home by the Valbonne road. 
Pierre Sube said that the walking party were late, 
and, as he looked rather displeased at the fact of having 


UNDER THE STARS. 


25 


been kept waiting for half-an-hour or more, the talk 
about the regiment and the review had to be cut much 
shorter than the miller of Clausonne liked. He elicited 
from the Firmins only a few items of intelligence : that 
the inn-keeper's son from Tourretes had had fever, 
looked like a ghost, and was gone to hospital ; that 
Felicien Bellaud and Noel Cresp had been spoken 
with, but that Jean Mouradour the drummer-boy 
was dead, and had been buried at sea ; that the Hydra 
transport had already gone round to Toulon ; that the 
cholera might yet break out among the troops, and 
that, if it did, it might spread to Nice ; that the fire- 
works would not begin till eight o’clock, and that the 
gardiano of lamb eaten at the ‘Mule Noir’ had been 
horribly dear. 

‘Not so dear as this stupid war,’ cried the miller. 
‘ It is a pity that some of the gentry who got it up 
cannot be sent out there too, to die of the fevers of 
the country ; but you, little one,’ he added turning 
to Ninette, ‘ what have you seen to-day ? Some fine 
young fellow I hope likely to give you much 
pleasure.’ 

‘Not anything very fine,’ replied Ninette, ‘but the 

sea, and the bayonets, and the music ; and all our 
3 


26 


NINETTE. 


men; and Jean Mouradour’s mother out of her mind 
with grief/ 

‘ Ah ! what would you have ? the parents of con- 
scripts wade through troubles till the very saddle is 
wet’ ( lou bast bagne ), ‘but many of our lads who went 
away conscripts have come back heroes.’ 

‘Hold your tongue, Ninette,’ cried Madame Eu- 
genie ; ‘ don’t you see that we are late ? Get on the 
box with lou patron' (the master), ‘your father and I 
will have more room in the back seats.’ 

Ninette knew by experience that it was useless to 
remonstrate when once her step-mother had spoken, 
so she got nimbly upon the front bench of the wagon- 
ette, and, as soon as the lantern had been fastened 
to one of the shafts, the party set off on its long drive 
through the silent and scented woods. 

Nor did anyone immediately break that silence. 
Across the road stretched the ruined aqueduct, frag- 
ments of its masonry showing pale and ghost-like 
through the pines. The cue owl’s plaintive note 
came along the wind, and now and again the bleat 
of a kid struck on the ear. 

The Provencals distinguish between such a night 
as this, full of grey and mysterious half-tones over 


UNDER THE STARS . 


27 


which the moon sheds a wistful beauty, and the 
blue-blackness, so stern and rigid, of a moonless mid- 
night. The one they speak of as ‘ la mat noire' but 
this delicate mournful loveliness is described as ‘ la 
nuit blonde ' Fair and gracious this one was, down 
here where the pines come close to the road, but 
where their stems, like the lines of the buildings, are 
all blurred and, so to speak, lost at their base. Fairer 
still in the open regions, where you can see the outline 
of the hills, but fairest of all when you drive below the 
cliffs, and when the great crags overhead stand out 
motionless against the sky. The same crags, with 
their crevices full of abysses of light and shade, threw 
broad shadows across the road as the wagonette 
made its way towards the bridge of the Loup. The 
birches shook from their pendulous branches a faint 
and exquisite perfume, only the crickets cried from 
the tufted grasses, and Ninette was under the spell 
of the beauty of a slumbering world. 

Her father and mother were probably asleep. Alas 
for her that her charioteer was not ! 

Pierre Sube was a man of forty-eight years of age, 
but so stout as to appear older than his years. A 
man with a heavy, self-important step and manner, 


28 


NINETTE. 


perhaps because rumour was pleased to add that he 
had such a heavy purse. He was a native of Le 
Bar, but by profession a broker, going about from 
canton to canton, and from farm to farm, to buy in 
the crops, the oil, the almonds, and the dried fruits 
of the district. He had a correspondent in Nice, 
where he had a lodging, and was also very well- 
known, since he had busied himself in local poli- 
tics, and in the anti-clerical movement. He was a 
freemason, and a boon companion at carnivals and 
fairs, a frequenter of billiard-rooms and card-tables, 
to say nothing of the green-tables at Monte Carlo, 
since he held shares in that lucrative company which 
works the largest gambling-hell in Europe, but which 
is known under the harmless surname of the ‘ Socidtd 
anonyme des bains de mer de Monaco .’ His jokes were 
as broad as his shoulders, and if, through an aversion 
to matrimony, he had as yet escaped any domestic 
ties, there could be no doubt but that, if such a sultan 
ever threw the handkerchief, he could afford to give 
his sultana everything handsome about her. 

When he first took his place beside Ninette, and 
gathered up the reins into his thick hairy fingers, he 
was silent. But when the aqueducts had been left 


UNDER THE STARS . 


29 


behind, and when the mare in the shafts, who had 
begun by shying at their spectral-looking masses, 
had settled down to her quiet-paced work, then 
Pierre Sube seemed to find it dull to sit beside a 
little statue. So he addressed a compliment to 
Ninette, not only on the agility she had shown in 
getting into his carriage, but on the beauty of the 
foot and ankle he had caught sight of as she did so. 
Ninette, having an uneasy sense of what might 
follow on this prelude, got red as she answered, 
‘ Non cresi pas ,’ (‘I don’t believe it,’) and there was 
silence again for a few minutes. Then, as if the 
close vicinity of the beautiful girl on the bench be- 
side him stirred his curiosity, he turned round, and 
began to inspect her in a way that moved Ninette’s 
wrath. He finally held out a hand to her, but Ninette 
rolled both hers in her thick, blue apron, and pre- 
tended that the evening was chilly. In truth, her 
indignation kept her warm. 

‘ Pavla sinonT he said at length : but Ninette 
vouchsafed no reply. Determined, however, to carry 
on a conversation which should make her turn her 
pretty head in his direction, he asked her after whom 
was she called Ninette. 


30 


NINETTE. 


*' I am named Andrinette and Eliza also : after my 
mother/ she replied. 

‘ Well, your slip of a name suits your slip of a 
body ; but, though you are little, I suppose you know 
that you are as pretty a girl as is to be found on this 
side of Genoa? Are you fond of dancing ?’ 

4 Non sabi pas , 9 (‘ I don’t know/) answered the girl; 
and then silence fell again between the two. 

How rude this man was ! and what ugly eyes he 
had, so big and fierce with their yellow gleams, and 
yet not big enough for his immense broad cheeks I 
What a hateful animal ! And then he was so greedy : 
to make it better. Everyone said that he had made 
his money badly and that he spent it worse. What a 
pity that odious men were rich, and good ones poor. 
Now there was Noel Cresp. Suppose that he were 
to become rich, that would surely be an honour to his 
parents, to old Cresp the carpenter, and to his sister 
Rose; even to Le Bar, where he was born, and cer- 
tainly to his wife when he married one. Ah ! but 
w T hom would he marry? And Ninette was aware that 
at the thought of this prospective, though imaginary, 
Madame Noel Cresp her own heart felt tight. For 
that good Noel had always been her playfellow, the 


UNDER THE STARS. 


31 


one to whom all the neighbours had agreed that 
she would in the end have to be given as a wife. 
They had always been such good friends that she 
did not know when he had first begun to be kind to 
her, but she remembered how dearly she had loved 
him and his sister Rose when they all three made 
their first Communion together. The Segoundari who 
catechised them had praised her then, and Noel was 
so pleased when her aunt and uncle had asked him 
and Rose to dinner. She wondered if Noel remem- 
bered all that? Why, it was so long ago that no 
doubt he had forgotten it. He was then the biggest 
of the boys, and, having gone to bis military service 
at eighteen, he had since been to Tonquin, which was 
wonderful, and he had come back, which Madame 
Mouradour, the poor little drummers mother, declared 
to be more wonderful still. 

Yet to-day when he had spoken to her on the 
parade-ground, and had shown her the stripe on his 
sleeve, he had said that he had never forgotten. If 
he had never forgotten, that, of course, meant that 
he remembered. But what? But how much? Per- 
haps the day when they came down from the Clus 
de St. Auban before her father married again, or that 


3*2 


NINETTE. 


first Communion, and the brioches which they went to 
eat at her aunt's house after it. Then her uncle, the 
wizard-doctor, gave them wine, made of myrtle- 
berries, and Noel would not believe that it was 
myrtle ( nerto ) wine, but only wine that belonged to 
her Aunt Nerta.* He declared that it was a trick, 
and vowed if it were not he would water a bit of the 
terrace with it, and see if myrtles would grow from 
it ; when Uncle Anfos had laughed at him. Perhaps 
Noel did not remember that joke, but only the terrible 
thunder-storm when the largest oak at Le Rouret was 
struck, and poor Maigrana lost her sight. Perhaps 
he remembered how little step-brother Pepe died of 
the small-pox. Poor little fellow ! how he did suffer, 
and how he cried for the butter-milk 1 But why did 
Maigrana say when Pepe died, that she had rather 
be blind without him, than have kept her eye-sight if 
it was to see him in the house ? Maigrana was gener- 
ally so kind, but she had certainly not sorrowed for little 
P6pe, and between her and the step-mother there was 
certainly no love lost. Perhaps even not much love 
now between that big loud-voiced avarasse (miser) 

* Nerto, or myrtle, the Esther of the Jews. The making of myrtle- 
wine was taught to the Prove^als by the Hebrew colonists. It is still 
used as a cordial. 


UNDER THE STARS. 


83 


and her father. What hard words they used to each 
other sometimes ! It could not be that they loved 
each other. No, there was no love anywhere in the 
house, except between herself and Maigrana. Yet 
the world was made for loving : listen I The cart 
was passing at that moment under a little wood of 
cherry-trees, whose ivory blossoms showed white in 
the moonlight, and out of this thicket a nightingale 
suddenly poured his hurried, rapturous song. Earth 
with its hundred voices, Heaven with its myriad 
stars, seemed made for music, tenderness, love. 

Suddenly the wagonette stopped. Ninette’s neigh- 
bour, disgusted probably at her reserve, had not 
offered her any cover from the folds of a thick striped 
limousine , which lay beside him on the box, so the 
girl had had no protection from the night dews but 
her little cotton dress. Luckily she was young, with 
lithe limbs, so she sprang hastily from her seat. But 
her haste was in this case the worst speed, since her 
gown caught on a nail, and greatly to her disgust 
Pierre Sube had to release her. As he did so, and 
while Madame Eugenie and her husband were occu- 
pied in getting out of the other end of the wagon- 
ette in the dark, the broker seized her hand. 


34 


NINETTE. 


i Is it all to be gratis V he said, making as if he 
would have kissed the girl. 

Ninette replied, 

‘ A giaba /’ (gratis), and, by bending herself almost 
double, she slipped so quickly under his outstretched 
arm that he had not even time to recover his surprise 
at her disappearance before the Firmins had safely 
reached the ground, and before Ninette was well across 
the threshold of the farm-house of Le Eouret. 


CHAPTER IV. 


TIIE GRANDMOTHER. 

Mais ni la pauvrete constant©, ni la mort, 

Des troupeaux ; ni le fils aine, tomb4 au sort : 

Ni la famine apres les mau raises r^coltes : 

Ni les travaux subis sans cris et sans re voltes : 

Ni la fille, servant© au loin qui n’^crit pas : 

Ni les mille tourments qui font pleurer tout baa 
En cachette, la nuit, les craintives aieules : 

Ni la foudre du ciel, incendiant les meules, 

Ni tout ce qui leur parle encore du pass4, 

Dans l’etroit cimietiere a l’&glise adoss^e, 

Oil vout jouer les blonds enfants apr&s l'dcole, 

Et qui cache, parmi l’herbe et la vigne folle, 

Plus d’un croix de bois qu’elles connaissent bien : 

Rien n’a trouble leur cceur herolque et chrdtien. 

Les Aieules , de Fr. Copp£e. 

TnE farm-house, though only two storeys high, 
loomed large and massive in the moonlight. It was 
in reality a very ugly building, built in the Proven- 
cal fashion of small, shapeless stones ill-morticed 
together, yet it looked picturesque enough in this 
half-darkness because the tiled roof was low-pitched, 
and because from under the eaves of one of the gables 


86 


NINETTE. 


there stuck out a long, iron bar ending in a wheel and 
a length of dangling rope. 

The house stood in a little bend of the hill-side, 
much more retired therefore, than the farms which 
line the Malbosc side of the great post-road to Grasse. 
The olive-woods here cover a greater extent of coun- 
try, and they necessarily make the horizon of such a 
house a narrow one. Nor is there here any breadth of 
plough-land, only narrow, terraced fields in which 
trees are planted, with an undergrowth as the case 
may be of violets or of oats; to say nothing of the many 
and bright- coloured weeds. A tall row of poplars marks 
the line of the highroad, the leaves of these trees keep- 
ing up a babbling sound in the cool air of the night. 
Very different from them and sombre as funeral trees 
are the two cypresses that guard the wooden gate- 
way of the farm, while just behind the house there 
rises the big Rouret , or oak, from which the farm 
takes its name, and which stands like a landmark 
above the grey and misty mass of the olives. 

The door of the house is reached by a short flight 
of irregular steps for which there is no balustrade, 
and under which is the black yawning gulf of the 
cellar-like stable. By reason of the window-tax, a 


THE GRANDMOTHER 


87 


Provengal farmer allows himself but few glazed aper- 
tures, and accordingly in the front of this house there 
were only three glazed windows, two close under the 
eaves, and one, being that of the kitchen, on the left- 
hand side of the door. 

All these windows have their wooden shutters closed 
to-night, and the only gleam of light which is visible 
comes from a sort of lean-to, an afterthought of thatch 
and masonry, attached to the left-hand side of the 
dwelling-house, and at this moment deep in its shadow. 

Not a sound broke the silence as Ninette turned her 
steps rapidly in its direction and entered. 

The door, half off its hinges at any rate, stood ajar, 
the floor and the walls being of beaten clay could 
hardly be distinguished from the earth outside, but a 
petroleum-lamp burning on a shelf showed the old 
peasant-woman who inhabited this cheerless cell. 

Helpless and uncomplaining old Petronilla Firmin 
lay in the farthest recess of the out-house. Her white 
pique cap without frills, and her abundant grey hair 
caught the light, and beside her dimly discernible in 
it were two motionless figures. Of these the one was 
very dark and shapeless, for it was that of Toussaint 
the goat-herd, a humpbacked simpleton, the only 


S8 


NINETTE. 


servant kept by the Firming, well broken-in to orphan- 
hood, and hunger, and blows, but deputed for this 
holiday occasion to the charge of the bed-ridden 
Maigrana. The other mass, though equally shapeless, 
was smaller and very fair, being that of Biondino, the 
yellow sheep-dog. 

At Ninette’s approach the dog lifted his head though 
he did not bark, but his human companion, lying on a 
bundle of ferns, showed no signs of life, till Ninette 
shaking him by the shoulder cried, 

‘ Oh ! what good guardians ! were you not both 
asleep ? I am sure that you were. Anyhow, get up 
now, both of you.’ 

Biondino fawned on her and licked her hands. 
Toussaint rubbing his eyes scrambled to his feet, 
and exhibited in the dim lamplight one of those 
strange and misshapen figures which Nature sends 
nowand again into poor families, there to become too 
often the victims of incessant scorn, or of an even 
more cruel neglect. His round head, with its squint 
eyes and long disorderly locks of hair, barely rose 
between the wide shoulders from w r hich hungdown his 
long and apelike arms. 

He tightened the sash round his waist as he rose, 


THE GRANDMOTHER. 


89 


and, between stammering and laughing, said, ‘ 161 it 
is so good here that one does indeed sleep a little too 
well.’ 

Then, with a muttered good-night, addressed not 
only to the old woman and her grandchild, but also 
1 ci la coumpagnie / viz., to their guardian angels, he 
shambled off to his bed of leaves in the barn. 

* Are we very late, Maigrana?’ asked Ninette, as she 
knelt beside the bed, laying one hand on Biondino’s 
ears and the other on the old peasant’s emaciated palms. 

i Late enough for watchers but not very late for 
pleasure-seekers I daresay/ was the reply. 

Ninette caressed her again, wondering to herself if 
she had really been a pleasure-seeker. Meeting Noel 
Cresp had been something more than a mere pleasure, 
and no doubt the sights and sounds of that day would 
always be remembered by her. But at the same 
time the long drive home in the darkness had sad- 
dened her, the compliments of a coarse man had irri- 
tated her, and her heart had yearned for the touch of 
someone dear to her, for the voice of the old, bedridden 
peasant in whose trembling arms she found sensations 
of which she enjoyed, though she could not explain 
them, both the sweetness and the power. Simple but 


40 


NINETTE . 


great-hearted, old Petronilla lay where the years had 
passed over her, bringing to her at dawn and at sun- 
set, at seed-time and in harvest, the same monotonous 
burden of suffering; bringing to her no other changes 
than those caused by the ripening of the fruits, and 
by the waning and waxing of the year. 

‘ You have not been worse, have you, Maigrana V 

‘No, no. You did not fancy that to yourself at 
Antibou, did you, child V 

‘ 1 was only a little afraid how it might be with you. 
I hope Toussaint was good?’ 

6 Oh, very good/ 

6 And how does he get on with his creed V 

The old woman shook her head. 

‘ Always the same thing,’ she said ; ‘no getting the 
doctrine into his poor head. And after all do not the 
sparrows praise Gabriel, who protects them from the 
hawks, and are they not all numbered by God? The 
swallows too fai ren que dire , “ Jesu Christ ! Jesu 
Christ /” and I suspect that when our poor humpback 
goes before the boun Diou it will appear that he 
knows nothing but the sign of the Cross. However, 
lie who died there for Toussaint must overlook that, 
since the poor creature is an innocent/ 


THE GRANDMOTHER. 


41 


‘ I hope that as he is also what Madame Eugenie 
calls a wolf he did not happen to eat up your dinner, 
and that you ate something. Was my soup of bread 
and milk soft enough ? Did you eat it, and the oranges 
that came from Cannes!’ 

‘ I ate them, and I thanked you for them, my little 
one, who never forgets any wants but her own. I 
prayed for you, and I prayed for those who will never 
return. There were tears shed to-day in Antibou.’ 

* That there were and plenty of them, with plenty 
more left behind them to come. My heart bled to see 
all those pale, wasted creatures, such ghosts of men, 
as the invalids looked ; and yet it seems that we did 
not see the worst of them, for they had been already 
carried to the military hospital.’ 

‘Pray heaven that from the hospital there the 
Sisters have not yet been sent away.’ 

‘ I think not, Mai gran a.’ 

‘ So much the better ; there will not then be any- 
one to drink the cream off the milk of the patients.’ 

‘ Ah 1 how many blanks there must be and then 
Ninette paused, only resuming to say, in a much 
lower voice, ‘ Do you know that in four months more 
Noel Cresp will have served his time V 


4 


42 


NINETTE. 


‘ There is at least a good side to beginning military 
service at eighteen, as he did/ 

‘Yes; Rose and I cried bitterly over that at the 
time, but it finishes all the sooner, and once it is over 
he cannot again be sent beyond seas.’ 

‘ Has he been ill V 

‘ No, never ; and he has a good-conduct stripe/ 

‘ And that pleases you V 

Ninette first replied by nodding her head, and then, 
with some animation, though still in a lower voice, 
and as if afraid of being overheard, she added : 

‘If you could see how handsome he is !’ Then, in 
a coaxing whisper, ‘ If I were to lie down beside you, 
I should not run the risk of meeting anyone in the 
house ; we could sleep a little, and we might also 
speak a little before I have to go out to feed the lamb 
in the morning/ 

The old woman touched her head caressingly, and 
Ninette proceeded to put her plan in execution. She 
began by pulling off her shoes and stockings and by 
rolling them in her apron; then, kneeling down, she 
made the sign of the Cross, and repeated devoutly the 
White Paternoster, which has long formed and still 
comprises, a peasant-girl’s idea of evening prayer. 


THE GRANDMOTHER. 


43 


The grandmother crossed herself also as she listened 
to the familiar words of this 4 preiro don soir 9 

1 An liech de Dion, 

We couche iou : 

Sept Anges m’en trouve ion : 

Tree en peds, 

Quatre au capet, 

La Buoeno Mero es en metan, 

Uno roso bianco a la man/ 

* Adorem denotement Jesh eme Mario ! 9 responded 
Petronilla. 

These orisons said, Ninette put out the lamp, and 
laid herself alongside of the old woman. Her face, 
still cool with the freshness of the night-air, rested 
close beside the old, wrinkled countenance, on which 
were written the labours and sorrows of more than 
seventy years, and soon the moonlight, striking into 
the cheerless sleeping-berth of these two women, 
fell upon the slumberers, and silvered on the curves of 
the girl’s little cheek a crescent, as slender and more 
pathetic than ever adorned Diana’s brows. Ninette's 
breath went and came gently, for she slept as the little 
children sleep, with clenched hands and parted lips. 
Only the grandmother slept but lightly— old age is apt 
to be wakeful — and to-night some prescience agitated 
Petronilla Firmin. It warned her that in the young, 


44 


NINETTE . 


warm veins beside her the sweet and subtle influences 
of the spring were stirring; that the earth, and the 
night, and the blossom-laden trees had whispered to 
the little maid something of Love’s cosmic law ; that 
even granting Ninette to be heart-whole till to-night, 
before long this little Ninette of hers would love. 
And how then would it fare with Hugues Firmin’s 
daughter ? She might love indeed since thought is 
free, and since the heart makes its elections without 
consulting parents and guardians. But of marriage 
there could be no question where there is no portion, 
and what dowry could be reckoned upon, or indeed 
found, in this house, or off the fields which no longer 
supported their owner ? Ninette had to do a servant’s 
work without a servant’s wages in this unblessed house, 
where debt and discord reigned, and where moreover 
Ninette was expected to wait upon herself, the blind 
supernumerary, the burden of the family. Just be- 
cause Ninette had so often to keep watch by her had 
T oussaint been engaged. It is true that in his long arms 
the be'gu was a formidable instrument, and that the 
simpleton could dig and trench the earth while Firmin 
carried fruit and other produce to market. Her son 
used to keep a mule going and coming from the markets 


THE GRANDMOTHER. 


45 


of Grasse and Le Bar for this purpose, but, among other 
recent misfortunes, the mule had died, and when there 
was no money to buy another the humpback had 
been hired in his place. Poor Toussaint! cheaper 
than a beast, because there was no price put upon 
the labour of his misshapen thews and sinews. Poor 
Toussaint ! Stammering and laughing without know- 
ing why he laughed : almost on a level with the field 
crops, or with his own yellow-dog, he was indeed 
to be pitied ; yet perhaps his presence in this house 
might bring a blessing on it, since innocence is sup- 
posed to be ever under the Divine protection. But 
even supposing this humpback to be all that he was 
not, viz., indefinitely capable of feeding lambs, washing 
linen, herding turkeys, and setting eggs, the poor 
imbecillas was none the less an expense, and one 
which had been forced on the farmer by her own and 
Ninette’s incapacity for field-work. 

This was a bitter subject to contemplate, and 
accordingly old Petronilla sighed, and touched her 
grandchild softly, yearning over the little over- 
worked body and the tender, loving spirit, till she 
felt half-tempted, in her pity and concern for Ninette, 
to ask God to remove her from a world where she 


46 


NINETTE. 


was only a burden to her family, being but blind and 
bed-ridden, older than anybody, and weary because 
of the hardness of the way. But she checked that 
petition. It would have been a self-willed one. 
‘God’s will be done I' she said. No words could 
say how deeply God had humbled and afflicted 
her, in her husband’s death in the Crimea, in 
her own helplessness, in her son’s second marriage, 
and now in little Ninette's hard lot; yet no tongue 
either could tell the secret consolations which He 
had ever imparted to her, so far above all her deserts. 
When God should see fit to remove her, He would 
know when and where to put His hand on her, and 
Ninette must also learn to trust Him who can bring 
light out of darkness, and who does all things well. If 
Ninette were to love she had no right to expect the 
rose without the thorns. 

*Ple9i d’amour 
Fenia en plour/ 

says the country song ; yet heaven send to the blame- 
less little maid the love without too many of the tears ! 

On waking, Ninette imparted to her grandmother 
in a whisper some more of her impressions of her holi- 
day trip to Antibes. She dwelt with emphasis on her 


THE GRANDMOTHER. 


47 


dislike to Monsieur Pierre Sube, the patron , who had 
driven them home. 

‘ My step-mother says that he is to get a decoration 
from the Government because of something he did at 
the great Exhibition at Nice last year, and 1 heard 
him say' to her that, because there there is no exhibi- 
tion to take up his time this summer, he will come 
often to Le Bar, and to our house — I hope not, for he 
is horrible — you can hardly figure to yourself how 
horrible he is ; his hands are so hairy, and he is twice 
as stout as he was when he was here at the time of 
little Pope’s death. But you did not see him then : 
you were already sightless !’ 

‘ It needed no eye-sight now or then to see that 
he was a bad man. Avoid him, little one.’ 

‘ I do not desire to see him again, I assure you.’ 

But Ninette did meet him again, and that almost 
immediately. She was carrying a bundle of hay in 
her apron, and just as she entered the stable, where 
Muscadine the lamb expected its morning meal, she 
ran full against her father and his visitor. Monsieur 
Sube, rubicund and alert, looked bent on conquests, 
but in the twinkling of an eye Ninette transferred 
the bundle of hay from her apron to her head, and 


48 


NINETTE. 


poised it there so adroitly as to make any attempt at 
a kiss impossible. She wished the stranger a demure 
4 boun giour] and then disappeared into the cavernous 
depths of the rock-hewn stable. She had only time 
to hear Pierre Sube say to her father, 

6 You have nothing else on the farm half so good, 
and it ought to make a difference to you in disposing 
of the land.’ 

What could they be discussing? Possibly the 
giant oak, from which the farm takes its name. 
Ninette could only pray that it might not be Mus- 
cadine, that prettiest of lambs. She stroked the 
little creature, and fed it from her hand. 

‘ If a monster like Sube were to take a fancy to 
thee, my pretty little rose, it would assuredly go ill 
with thee. Such a man’s praises could only mean 
a butcher’s knife. He may even have the evil eye ; 
I could well believe it of him.’ 

And Ninette determined to keep all her charges 
under lock and key, lest this gringot should cast a 
spell on her turkeys and rabbits, and carry off Mus- 
cadine under a net to the shambles. 

Alas I it was for her own feet that the net was 
likely to be spread. 


CHAPTER Y. 


HUGUES FIRMIN', FARMER. 

0 husbandmen, too dear to Fortune, if they know their own blessed- 
ness. For them, of herself, far from the clash of arms, all-righteous 
Earth pours from her soil an easy sustenance .... With them are 
woodland glades, the wild beasts’ haunt, and a band of youths inured to 
toil and accustomed to little .... Other men vex with oars the peril- 
ous seas, and rush to take the sword. The husbandman, with his 
crooked plough, furrows the soil. From this comes the work for the 
year, by this he maintains his country and his little grandsons. This 
life of yore the Antique Sabines lived. 

Second Georgia. (Globe Edition ) 

Si l’on pouvait former un choix en matifcre de destinee c’est prob- 
ablement la vie des champs qui trompcrait le moins 1’esperance. 

Comte de Falloux. 

The opinions which stand at the head of this chapter 
were uttered by Virgil and by one who was not only 
a good and accomplished man, but who was deeply 
versed in the agricultural life of France. Yet it is 
doubtful whether, in the spring of 1886 , their verdicts 
would have found an echo in the breast of Hugues 
Firmin, farmer and peasant-proprietor of the lands 
known as Le Rouret, in the canton of Bar-sur-Loup, 
and in the department of the Maritime Alps. 


50 


NINETTE. 


Of all the arts tills art of husbandry, by directly 
feeding mankind, would seem to keep the creature most 
close to the works of the Creator, and poets naturally, 
perhaps on this account, have said many pretty things 
about it. But then the poets, like the late excellent 
Comte de Falloux, were not exposed to the wretched 
accommodation, to the heavy mortgages, and to the low 
standard of education which are the portion of the peas- 
ant proprietor at the best of times, any more than they 
were to the danger of starvation should skies be incle- 
ment, and the sub-divided soil prove so ungrateful as to 
ruin its owner. Agriculture, whether by its misfortune 
orits fault, has acquired a sad pre-eminence in bringing 
about the habitual (in this decade of the nineteenth 
centuiy, I had almost said the inevitable) ruin of the 
husbandman. Is it that farmers are all visionary, 
imprudent, or incapable ? A good many of them are 
so : and expensive intermediaries come between 
them and their customers, while among French 
peasant farmers it is as idle to expect sound views 
in chemistry as it is to look for well-kept accounts. 
There are also heavy local dues, to say nothing 
of an enormous taxation, and of a wasteful, sloven- 
ly system of tillage, with sub-division carried to 


EUGUES FIRMIN', FARMER. 


51 


such a length that progress is checked, and but 
one level of cultivation is reached. Needless to 
say that that level is the lowest, nor has the in- 
crease of protective duties really mended the 
matter. There is no co-operation, no division of 
labour, and the natural advantages of soil and climate 
can never be turned to the best account where there 
is no capital to invest in drainage or in a better 
system of tillage through labour-saving machinery. 

I do not mean to say that agriculture in every 
department of France is fatal to the small proprietor. 
As a rule, French proprietors are too far-seeing to 
attempt this sort of agriculture, except where the 
vicinity of markets promises some at least of the 
essential conditions of success. But in the Maritime 
Alps, under the present drawbacks of foreign com- 
petition, enormous taxation, high-priced labour, and 
dying olive-trees, it is not too harsh a term to say of it 
that the system is unremunerative, and that there is 
nothing for its smaller landowners to do but to abandon 
their property. In this way at least they can avoid 
having to pay for labour, while they can shirk at least 
some of the taxes which they were formerly called 
upon to meet. 


52 


NINETTE . 


I am not writing a treatise on agriculture, but, in 
order to explain the condition of my little heroine 
and of her family, I am obliged to mention here some 
of the most prosaic details, so as to explain the pressing 
expenses which a peasant proprietor has to meet. In 
the first place, there is a capitation tax of two francs 
seventy-five centimes per head ; this is personal. 
Next, we have the mobiliere , or tax on the furniture ; 
then the impot fonder , which is followed by the 
road tax for the rural roads, which has to be paid 
in labour. If the man has any other occupation 
besides that of farming, he must further pay his 
patente (which is assessed as a sixth of his rent) ; 
and, if he possesses a share in any company (irriga- 
tion, or the like), he has eight per cent, to pay. On 
making a mortgage he pays between one and two 
per cent., and, when he takes his meat into market, 
the octroi (or town due) stands him in ten centimes 
on every hundred kilos. The window tax shuts up 
the outlets of his house, and, owing to bad seasons, 
the land really costs him more than he can pay. He 
has then two courses open to him. One, to live at the 
expense of the public ; the other, to find another way 
of earning his living. 


HUGUES FIRMIN, FARMER. 


53 


Hugues Firmin was face to face with this problem at 
the time when my story begins. He had, when he first 
acquired Le Rouret, begun by hoping against hope, be- 
cause, in the district in which he dwelt but little wheat 
is grown, and that it therefore mattered not to him that 
the weight of wheat which it would have cost himforty- 
five francs to produce, can be purchased on the quays 
of Marseilles for thirty-five francs. Moreover he had 
hopes founded on the development of the flower and 
perfume trade, and of the always increasing demand 
for fruit, vegetables, tomatoes, capsicums, and the 
rest of those articles to which la petite culture does 
such justice. But, unluckily, within the last twelve 
years, the olive-trees had sickened, so that but little 
oil was now pressed from the fruit of Hugues Firmin’s 
fifty-three trees. That fact alone would suffice to 
create a depth of despair ; but within that deep 
there positively opened a yet lower depth of ruin. It 
did not now matter whether his trees recovered or 
did not, because the little oil which they did yield 
is undersold in the market either by those mineral oils 
of Baku, which the Russians send to Marseilles in 
floating tanks, or by that sesamum oil, of which more 
than fifty million kilogrammes are annually imported 


64 


NINETTE. 


into France for adulterating oil used in food. Add 
to this prodigious item the quantity of cotton-seed 
oil now in use, and the plantations of olive-trees in 
the Southern States, and it becomes easy to predict 
that no recovery is possible for the trade which 
was once the speciality and the glory of Provence. 
As yet, I have only spoken of the troubles which 
Idugues Firmin shared with his neighbours, of the 
troubles which were Polichiners secret, as was also 
the fact that the Credit F oncier, by lending money to 
so many ruined proprietors, has become, de facto , the 
one great land-owner of this district. It is on the 
chapter of Hugues’ personal troubles that I must now 
enter. He was simply more pinched than the heirs of 
Magdaleine Pascal, whose land marched with him on 
the west, or than Honore Chabriant, who marched with 
him on the east, or than a certain Jean-Pierre Ardisson, 
with whom he had had a law-suit about the ravine. 
A little rill traverses the farm from north to south, 
and its upper waters had been diverted by Jean- 
Pierre Ardisson, hence the war which vindicated the 
old proverb about the connection between land and 
law-suits. Hngues was notoriously more back-going 
than any of these persons (though they also knew what 


EUGTJES E1RMIN, FARMER. 


65 


a mortgage meant), because he had his mother and 
Ninette and Toussaint to keep, while he only gained 
two francs fifty centimes (two shillings and a penny) a 
day, viz., the sum represented by the work of his own 
hands. It is true that Ninette and Toussaint did some 
work on the farm, but not one of the party was in 
the receipt of wages, or likely to earn them either in 
the perfume factories, or in any other remunerative line. 

Let me now speak of the lands of Le Rouret. They 
covered from two to three hectares , or about ten 
thousand metres , and were therefore of no con- 
temptible proportions. In the days of his predeces- 
sors, when the Revolution had indisputably improved 
the condition of the peasants, a great deal of land 
was put into the market by impoverished landlords. 
Farming was not then the forlorn hope which it 
has become now that every European product is 
grown on a greater scale in other continents, and 
that steam renders the transport of foreign cereals as 
cheap and easy as they are both difficult and costly 
to produce or to transport at home. Accordingly, the 
former owners of Le Rouret spent their savings in 
buying-in fields that were to be had cheap, and they 
even borrowed money to secure little parcels of con- 


56 


NINETTE. 


tiguous land. N or was immovable property then invest- 
ed in entirely as a speculation, for a great deal of pride 
entered into the arrangement. The metres of soil 
showed bravely in the sun, while the debts con- 
tracted about them did not show. But if there was 
this time for borrowing, there came eventually a 
time to pay; and it is to be doubted whether Hugues 
Firmin was then the better for the twenty-seven 
separate parcels of which his estate was composed. 

Hugues had not been all his life a farmer, but he 
had been all his life a very poor man, ‘ pulling,’ as he 
described it, 4 the devil by the tail/ and he had lived 
among poor people, and, not unnaturally, had mar- 
ried a poor girl. When I say that they were 
poor, I mean that they never had more than two 
francs fifty centimes a day to spend after Eliza 
Kosingana’s health prevented her working in Grasse. 
She had gone on labelling bottles of scent there till 
she w T as within three weeks of her daughter s birth, 
after which she had to resign herself to suffering, 
breathless expectancy. There, in the poorest attio 
of one of those houses which do not seem to require 
an earthquake to shake them to pieces, Ninette was 
born. 


HUGUES FIRMIN , FARMER. 


57 


Bar-sur-Loup has a most romantic situation ; I 
know none finer even in this romantic under-cliff, 
which as the product of successive ages is fortunate 
in possessing many of the happiest conjunctions of 
landscape and of mediaeval Prove^al towns. Le Bar 
stands at the junction of three valleys. One of them, 
the deepest, is that gorge through which the Loup 
pours forth its snow-fed waters, and sends them down 
through whispering woods to meet the dark-blue 
sea. 

The lateral cliffs of that great gorge fall plumb 
into a channel which the torrent seems to deepen 
year by year. Le Bar stands on a hill, on a series of 
banks of rock and turf and till, and from the heart 
of the little town, high up in the sunshine, and far 
above the fertility of gardens and orchards, there rises 
the majestic old castle of the Counts of Grasse-Bar. 
They obtained the fief from the Counts of Provence 
in 1238, and one sees how wise they were to make 
the most of this coign of vantage, looking every way 
as it does along the passages between the sea and 
the wild valleys which spread up to the Cheiron, to 
that bleak wall of rock which acts as a background 
to rich, sunny, fruitful Maritime Provence. The two 
5 


58 


NINETTE. 


plains of Canaux and La Malle have corn-fields, and 
the peasants were rich in wine and oil, as well as in figs 
and roses and orange-blossom, until the cairon worm 
and the phylloxera damaged the two first-named 
crops. The climate at all events is delicious, and it is 
simply because Le Bar, the Roman station and the 
feudal stronghold, is neglected for more fashionable 
sites, that it now has for tenants only an obscure 
bourgeoisie , and such poor people as, living with 
few wants, can be fed and clothed by the re- 
sults of their individual labour. Their patches of 
land, their plots, and their orange-farms lie about 
this romantic, mediaeval fortress and its net- work 
of naiTOw streets, like a girdle of green and gold. 
From this it will be seen that Le Bar is now both 
old-fashioned and deserted. Silent are the castle 
halls, rusty the old balustrades, and empty that heavy 
crenelated tower which, after its brethren have all 
been dismantled, still rears its tall head above the 
smaller streets, and even above the parish church 
itself. The principal rooms of the castle have been 
converted into a cafe , and village politicians spout over 
their absinthe where the proud Count of Grasse-Bar 
ouce entertained Francis I., not only as a sovereign 


HUGUES FIRMIN, FARMER. 69 

but as a cousin ; since the Count’s father had married 
a Foix. 

The last famous representative of this great house 
was the Admiral Joseph de Grasse Bar, who lost his 
beautiful flag-ship, the Ville de Paris , to Lord Rodney. 
Some of the descendants still hold land in the 
neighbourhood, but his old deserted castle, so haughty 
in its decrepitude, seems to suffer most in this, that 
the squalid people who live in its rooms have even 
lost the traditions of the aristos who built the castle, 
who quarrelled with their neighbours, allied them- 
selves to the blood royal, commanded fleets, and 
exacted heavy dues from the poor. 

Below the castle there is the net- work of dark and 
tortuous streets which are seldom more than four feet 
wide. Sometimes they are even narrower, but they are 
never crowded — indeed, during the day-time they are 
generally empty, for the inhabitants go out to sow 
and to reap the fields which belong to them till the 
evening. Everybody in the streets knows everybody 
else, and the passage through one of them of a 
stranger would be an event, and discussed as such 
by all the people who lean over shop doors, or carry 
water from the well. There it was that, among the 


60 


NINETTE. 


strings of garlic and entrails which hang in festoons 
from the black and crumbling walls, among the 
noises of the cobweb-covered stairs, and among the 
fetid odours rising from the rock-hewn stables, which 
invariably occupy the cellarage, that Hugues Firmin’s 
wife lived for one year after Ninette’s birth, and that 
lying-in for a second time, she died. There her little 
Ninette grew up as best she might, having for her 
companions the cats in the attics, and the grey pony 
in the stables which belonged to their neighbours, 
the Bensas, the Rancurels, and the Ballins. For 
friends she had also Noel and Rose Cresp, the children 
of a carpenter, whose wife was a Bensa by birth. 
Ninette was the delight of her paternal grandmother, 
old Petronilla Firmin, and, when she got able to toddle, 
she used to go to spend the day with her maternal 
grand-aunt, Nerta Ghiz, housekeeper to the cure of 
Le Bar. The presbytere and the parish church be- 
came a second home to her, while Nerta taught her her 
letters and her catechism, because the widow Petronilla, 
though devout, could neither read nor write. 

The little girl who spent hours in the church won- 
dered less at its flamboyant doorway, or at the 
pictures and carvings with which the municipality 


HUGUES FIRMIN, FARMER. 61 

and the Counts of Grasse-Bar had once adorned it, 
than at the tinsel flowers which Aunt Nerta produced 
on high days and holidays; and if Ninette dreamt it 
was not of the worn lac jacets of the dead, over which 
she tripped so lightly, but rather of Rancurel the 
beadle, parading the church in a red robe with a cane 
in his hand and an old rapier of heroic proportions at 
his heels ; perhaps, even, with tenderness of the little 
wax ‘ Jisu ’ whom she had been allowed to put into 
his cradle on Christmas Eve, between an ox and 
an ass of admirable realism. 

Such had been the surroundings of Ninette’s child- 
hood, and, but for her romps with the Cresps, they 
would have been calculated to make her a pre- 
maturely sedate little girl. Such as they were they 
were all abruptly changed when, on the death of a 
Firmin relation, Hugues succeeded to the farm of 
Le Rouret, and went out there to live on and by 
the fields. He knew something of tillage, for he 
had worked as a hired labourer on the land of one 
of his relatives, the Sigournets of Courmes, but he 
knew nothing of the responsibilities of this new ex- 
periment, of the campaign with frost, mildew, oidium, 
phylloxera, drought, hailstorms, rats, moles, and the 


62 


NINETTE. 


worms, which eat not really olives but prospects, 
hearts, fortunes, and lives. That his trial of them all 
had been disastrous has been already stated, and 
it was his failure which obliged him to marry again 
for money. 

W e must now return to Madame Eugenie, and to 
her acceptance of an elderly husband and of a country 
life. We have seen that she was richer in gold pieces 
than in golden opinions; but how was it that she 
either turned out to be, or represented herself as 
being, much less wealthy after her marriage than was 
given out before it? Three explanations of this 
painful fact were offered, and it is possible that the 
truth lay somewhere between the three. The first 
was that she had swaggered about a fortune which 
she did not really possess. The second was that, while 
unmarried, she had been allowed to put her hand 
into the money-bags of her cousin the broker. This 
had given her a good deal of money to spend, and lent 
to her an appearance of wealth which had assisted her 
to a marriage after she and her cousin came to a rup- 
ture. The cause or causes of that rupture no one had 
been fully able to penetrate, but there certainly had 
fallen a coolness on their relations, and Pierre Sube 


HUGUES FIRMIN , FARMER. 


63 


never put in an appearance at the farm of Le Rouret 
until the funeral of little Pepe. The third explanation 
of Madame Eugenie’s alleged impecuniosity was that 
she was concealing her securities, and was allowing 
money to accumulate at compound interest in Nice. 

As they had not married under the regime of com- 
munity of goods, Hugnes had no positive knowledge of 
his wife’s affairs. One thing was certain, that she would 
not make him any more advances of money. Yet these 
became absolutely necessary, since very soon after 
his succession he had begun to run into debt. His 
first wife’s uncle, old Anfos Ghiz the wizard doctor, 
was reputed a warm man, but then he had been 
so much displeased at the farmer’s second mar- 
riage that he would not after it lend a red farthing. 
His own cousins, the Sigournets of Courmes, had been 
ruined by a recent bank failure, and needed help to 
keep their own heads above water. So, on the 
security of his land, Hugues had to borrow heavily, 
when through the intervention of Monsieur Vassal, the 
notary, he raised a loan of eight thousand francs from 
the Credit Foncier. That company lends at seven 
per cent., is always the first creditor, and expects re- 
payment after seventy-five years. Le Rouret was in 


64 


NINETTE . 


this way and to the Credit Foncier, mortgaged to half 
its extent ; the previous debts of the farmer might be 
said to further run up the liabilities to about sixty per 
cent., and, as the taxes could not be valued at less 
than six per cent., it will be seen that a very small 
margin remained to meet the expenses of the farm, 
the bad seasons, and the keep of five persons. 

In things agricultural, it is at present the rule that 
from those who have not there shall be taken away even 
that which they have, so that by Ninette’s seventeenth 
birthday the wolf was really at the door of Le Rouret. 
Madame Eugenie from time to time had vouchsafed to 
give a little help, but only enough to purchase her own 
supreme authority in the house. Thus it was that the 
poor old Maigrana, removed from her bed in the kitchen 
to one in the out-house, had been made to feel the 
weight of Eugenie’s displeasure at her prolonged exist- 
ence ; thus it was that Ninette, tasked far beyond her 
strength, trembled lest the patronize should discover 
the new milk stolen by her for her grandmother; 
thus it was that Toussaint got more blows than 
loaves. 

‘ Oh, the wolf!’ the mistress would cry, if a large 
piece of stale bread, rubbed with garlic, was given 


HUGUES F1RMIN, FARMER. 


65 


to the poor goat-herd. 6 What a belly the fool has !’ 
she would often remark, and so Toussaint hated her 
intensely ; but he did his best to cheat her, and, after 
filling his belly with the husks that the swine did 
eat, he would stealthily bring a faggot of vine-sticks 
for old Petronilla’s fire, and keep the door shut, lest 
Eugenie, noticing the blaze, should enter, and scare 
them all with her words and blows. 

At the hour when my story opens* Hugues Firmin 
had been reduced by this tyranny to a state of dreary 
and inactive submission to his wife’s sovereign will. 
The loss of his rental and of his manhood seemed 
to act and react upon each other. 

On his way back from Antibes a new project began 
however to shape itself in his mind. 

The Credit Foncier would not lend any more 
money, but, if he could sell a part of his property, 
or even the whole of it, something might yet be 
saved out of the fire; whereas, if he waited for total 
bankruptcy, the forced sale then made was certain 
to be made at a loss : to say nothing of the scandal. 
He must sell now, and migrate into a town. He 
would avoid Le Bar, though his youth had been spent 
there, and though Ninette had been born in it, because 


66 


NINETTE. 


it was the residence of the Subes. There was Yence, 
with its violet farms and its factories of Italian paste ; 
and Cannes, with its life at high pressure of pleasure 
and speculation ; and, best of all, there was Grasse. 
There was plenty of carting work to be got there, and 
mason’s work, and he had also friends in the place. 
There was the long sunny Cours, and big ‘Martin’ 
sounding at curfew ; and the mounds of golden jon- 
quils ; and the retorts, where the deadly prussic-acid 
distils drop by drop ; and the cellars full of the moist 
rose-petals which the perfumers know so well how to 
convert into German marks and American dollars. 
Ninette and her grandmother might be housed some- 
where, possibly at her Aunt Nerta’s ; and then Ninette 
might now and again be in the way of earning a little. 
He himself would work, and could sleep no matter 
where. He would then eat at a restaurant with other 
men, and not have always served up to him on his 
kitchen-table (with the sauce of his wife’s bitter 
words) a food which he might well suppose the worst 
in the canton, were it not quite certain that some- 
thing yet more indigestible was reserved for Ninette 
and for her grandmother. 

The question was where to find a purchaser so 


HUGUES FIRMIN, FARMER. 


67 


hungry of land as not to be staggered by dead olive- 
trees, and by all the sorrows of overproduction in 
violets. Was there any man likely to wish to live 
at Le Rouret? Was there any mad Englishman 
likely to build a villa and a Protestant church there ? 
If there was, Hugucs Firmin made him welcome to 
establish himself and his heresy immediately. 

Of course, on this spring morning, his visitor Sube 
and he spoke together of land, and wood, and weather 
— that was to be expected; but it was something 
unexpected when Pierre Sube asked to see the 
farm, and said that he had some thoughts of 
settling near Le Bar. Houses in Grasse were dif- 
ficult to get, and he added that, though he had 
seen something near Malbosc which might serve 
his purpose, yet, as Le Rouret was much nearer 
to Le Bar and even more conveniently situated, he 
would like to go over this property in detail. Ac- 
cordingly about seven o’clock the two men went 
out to inspect it. 


CHAPTER VI. 


TllE FARM. 

The spring it is that ministers to the leafage of the groves .... 
Then Heaven, the almighty father, comes down in fertilising showers 
into the lap of his joyous bride, and in his might mingling with her mighty 
frame, nourishes every product .... I would believe that even such 
were the days that dawned at the first opening of the new-created 
world, and such the course they kept — ’twas spring-time then ! 

Second Georgia . ( Globe Edition.') 

So it was on this farm : exquisite spring-time ; but the 
two men thought of everything in the world except 
of its loveliness as they walked under the flickering 
shadows cast on the violet-beds, up the little ravine 
where the cherry-trees grow, past the cotes where 
were the doves, and over the tufts of white and purple 
iris, until pushing through a hedge of Bengal roses 
they struck the high-road, and retraced their steps 
to the house. They only re-entered it after visiting 
the stable where they met Ninette feeding her lamb. 

Like every dwelling of this class, the front door 
of this one opened into the gratssier , or flagged and 


THE, FARM . 


69 


unfurnished room which is so called from the piles 
of graisses , or shallow trays, in which fruit is dried. 
These trays, or frames, are made of reed-canes, or 
laths. In this instance, the month being April, they 
were all empty, and stacked together in a heap. 
In front of them lay a large liotte, or basket, to be 
carried on the back. It is used for gathering apples, 
or grapes, or grass, or even for transporting manure 
about the steep ten-ace-like fields. There was a spade 
with a broken handle, an iron bdgu, a ladder, and a 
pruning-hook, on the end of a long, spear-like pole : 
to say nothing of a basket of corks, a heap of mouldy 
oranges, a ragged sack or two, and some sheaths of 
maize. The kitchen opened to the left of this graissier . 
It was, if possible, a still more untidy place, and littered 
with unaccountable articles, since in Provence if a 
thing will serve the end wished, nothing is sacrificed 
to the graces of cleanliness and propriety. It was 
also smoke-begrimed, because the Firmins did not 
use dried wood or even burn faggots, but habitually 
threw on bundles of green or half- green brushwood, 
which fill every place with the most acrid and pene- 
trating smoke. The fireplace was overshadowed by 
a wide pent-roof. On the opposite wall a gun rested 


70 


NINETTE . 


on brackets, there was a print of Garibaldi well spat- 
tered by the flies, and one of the classically-shaped 
lamps, with a wick in its beak, hung from a chain ; 
besides some cloves of garlic, and a bundle of hen’s 
feathers stuck with stocking-wires. Under the win- 
dow stood a great, green jar with water ; on a chair 
was a shallow, earthenware basin, full of cold soap- 
suds ; but there were some other chairs unoccupied, 
and the farmer drew one of them towards the table 
for his guest. He also set a bottle of wine before 
Sube. It was early hours as yet for anyone to draw 
a cork, but Sube looked first into his tumbler, from 
which he had to evict a couple of flies, and then, 
wiping his forehead, he said, 

4 1 am not an eater, 1 am not a drinker, but since 
it is there, UV 

He swallowed a draught of the wine, which, being 
new and abominably rough, proved to be not at all to 
a taste formed in cafes and restaurants rather than in 
bankrupt farm-houses. He soon pushed the bottle to 
one side, and, pulling out his pocket-book, he began 
to run his eye over the memoranda taken during his 
ramble. 

4 We said that it measures over three hectares, did 
we not?’ 


THE FARM . 


71 


4 Yes,’ replied the farmer; and then, as if he had got 
the lesson by heart, he went on : 4 Ten thousand and 
twenty-three mitres , part arable, part pasture, made 
up of twenty-seven parcels, watered and situated in 
the Commune of St. Nicholas, Canton of Bar-sur- 
Loup, arrondissement of Grasse, and department of 
the Maritime Alps; belonging to Hugues Firmin, and 
to Andrinette-Elizabeth, his daughter, a minor, and 
domiciled at Le Rouret/ 

4 So I saw this morning when I had the honour to 
see her, and to tell you that she was the best thing 
you have on the farm ; but what interest in all this 
has Madame Eugenie V 

4 We did not marry under the regime of community 
of goods. She would have a right to live here in 
event of my death, or, in lieu of that, she had a bond 
of two thousand francs on the property/ 

4 Oh, she has. I did not know that. I was not 
consulted about her marriage, or its settlement, as you 
are perhaps aware/ 

And, throwing himself back in his chair, Sube con- 
templated the farmer. A bad grin spread itself over 
his coarse features as he did so. Hugues made as if 
the remark had not been directly addressed to him, 
though he knit his brows as he went on : 


72 


NINETTE . 


4 The house is in the first parcel, a house of stone 
with a tiled roof, with a cellar, oven, dove-cote, 
rabbit-hutch, out-house, and pousorago 9 (well with a 
wheel), 4 and five windows- ’ Sube was still look- 

ing at him with that odd smile, so the farmer went 
On as if reading off an inventory : 4 The rental was 
calculated at fifty-eight francs, eighty-three centimes/ 

4 Is that an old or a recent valuation V 

6 It was valued for the Credit Foncier five years 
ago/ 

4 What has the Credit Foncier to say to it ? The 
place I saw near St. Christophe de Malbosc belongs 
to them, and the former owner is their metayer ; but 
here you are at home/ 

4 Y es, but the Credit Foncier have a mortgage on 
the property. Things were awry when I came here, 
and, as they did not right themselves, I borrowed five 
years ago. All bad years/ Firmin added under his 
breath, and sighing he let his arms drop on each side 
of his chair. 

4 Hum, hum, hum 1’ said Sube, 4 but let us go on. On 
the second lot, being cultivated and watered fields 
with roots of violets, you place a value of sixty francs. 
What comes after that?’ 


THE FARM . 


73 


4 The parcel with the little ravine, rental eight 
francs, sixty-four centimes, bounded on the west by 
Honore Chabriant, whom may the devil take for giving 
evidence in favour of Ardisson in my law-suit.’ 

‘ Which you lost, I daresay ; what comes next V 

4 Two parcels which are contiguous to the high-road, 
both worth five francs ninety-seven centimes.’ 

4 Those were, you said, the best parcels, the pick of 
the property.’ 

4 After them come the smaller lots : No. 5, revenue 
two francs twenty-three centimes; No. 6, revenue 
four francs ; No. 7, revenue one franc ; No. 8, revenue 
three francs twenty-five centimes ; No. 9, revenue 
ninety-seven centimes ; No. 10, revenue three francs 
sixty-five centimes.’ 

4 We went no farther this morning, we have seven- 
teen more parcels to account for. Some folk think 
these parcels are great waste of time and fencing, but 
your estate seems to lie well together.’ 

4 It is only interlaced with Ardisson’s ground in 
three places, and the last parcel is a very good one. 
My grand-uncle bought it dear, with borrowed money, 
and in fact it has not been paid for yet. It has a sur- 
face of forty-two arcs , and a revenue of twenty-two 
6 


74 


NINETTE . 


francs sixty-two centimes, with a hastidoun on it, if 
anyone wished to buy it separately.’ 

4 Ah, buying is soon said but there is a lot of land 
in the market.’ 

4 There is too much, and too many violets, and too 
much in short of everything except of money, to 
feed the many, too many, mouths.’ 

4 Y ou have five mouths to fill — this farm won’t bear 
it. Were I in your place I know what I would do.’ 

4 What?’ cried the farmer, eagerly, in hopes that 
his guest might throw some light on a situation to 
which he at least brought a fresh eye. 

4 1 would send the old woman in there down to the 
Asile des Vieillards, at Cannes. It is a big place, bigger 
than the town needs, so they would be enchanted to 
get her.’ 

4 1 have been able as yet,’ muttered Hugues, ‘ to 
keep my mother after a fashion.’ It was on the tip of 
the farmer’s tongue to add that, till Madame Eugenie 
took the law into her own hands, that fashion had 
been a better one ; but some instinct warned him to 
keep off the subject of his wife with her rich cousin. 
So he refrained, but he got up and looked out of the 
door. 


THE FARM. 


75 


* Oh, as you will as you will : it’s no affair of mine ; 
but if the old woman was kept by those whom it 
amuses both to spend their money and to make a show 
of their good deeds, and if your daughter was off your 
hands, you could get along here alone and without 
a servant for a bit. It is the number of mouths to 
fill that plays the mischief. Do you know what a 
family has just done at Selles-St.-Denis ? The sons 
had an old mother of feeble intellect who passed for 
a sorceress ; they got her into a lunatic asylum, but 
the Government inspector said that she was not mad 
and ordered her out within twenty-four hours. So, to 
escape the worry of keeping her, they poured petro- 
leum on her and burned her alive. She was only 
sixty and she might have given a great deal of 
trouble/ 

And so saying Sube got up, and Eugenie coming 
in at that moment began to prepare for breakfast. 

Firmin went out, but Sube remained in the kitchen, 
and, while the onions browned in the pan, he made 
by cross-questioning his cousin some important dis- 
coveries as to Firmin’s liabilities. He also saw 
Ninette, who came in to fetch her grandmother’s food,' 
and he thought her prettier than ever when the 


76 


NINETTE. 


heat of the fire had added a tinge of colour to the 
pale, pretty face. To his disgust the girl did not 
appear at breakfast, where, if the raviolis were good, 
the wine we know was bad. 

After breakfast Sube left for Grasse, saying that 
he would see the man who had told him about the 
property at Malbosc, but without deigning another 
syllable as to his intentions with regard to the farm. 


CHAPTER VII. 


AT THE BEE-HIVES. 

In the first place, a fixed site must be sought out for the dwelling 
of the bees, to which the winds may never find a path, and where no sheep 
or butting kids may trample on the flowers .... About this place let 
green cassia and wild thyme that flings it fragrance round, and a 
wealth of strong-scented, savoury blossom and beds of violets quaff the 
irrigating spring .... Therefore, whenever you observe the train, 
just unprisoned from their yellow cages, to soar towards the stars of 
heaven, floating through the cloudless summer air, and view the dark 
cloud trailing in the wind, mark them .... Hitherward scatter at 
once the savoury herbs prescribed : bruised leaves of balm and the 
wax-flowers* humbler blades, and all about raise tinkling sounds, and 
rattle the cymbals of the Mother of the God3. Of themselves they will 
settle down on the spot you have prepared. 

Fourth Georgia {Globe Edition.) 

The farmer said nothing to Ninette as to his inten- 
tion of selling the farm, or as to its possible purchase 
by Sube. As for his wife, he wisely took it for 
granted that she both knew all about the matter, and 
would take her own view of it, and even in the end 
deal with it in her own way. But he was not so clear as 
to his mother and daughter. Ninette might possibly 
cling to the fields and to the animals which she tended, 


78 


NINETTE. 


but it was equally possible that the young girl would 
welcome a change. Most young girls do; and any 
rearrangement of their daily life might have the 
advantage of putting both the Maigrana and herself 
less at Eugenie’s mercy. As it was, Hugues Firmiu 
told her nothing of his hopes and fears, and she in this 
spring season occupied herself with her poultry, or as 
on this May morning, with the swarming of her bees. 

For two days the black clusters had hung about the 
hives, but only this morning had ‘ the dark cloud 
trailed in the wind.’ The whole day was spent in 
watching the swarms, and Ninette and her faithful 
Toussainthad to do all, and more than all, that Virgil 
bids the bee-keeper do. The results had been excel- 
lent ; the new swarms had been captured, only one 
having wandered out of reach, and now, with her 
rattle lying beside her on the turf, Ninette knelt trying 
to assure herself before the darkness fell that the new 
colonies, like the old ones, were housed to their liking. 
As she knelt she hummed an old nursery rhyme, 
‘ Plou , plou , e souleio , sur lou pont de Marseio She 
was alone, sole occupant of the grassy space before 
the hives, and a clump of closely-clipped rosemary 
bushes came between her and the gate of the farm. 


AT THE BEE-HIVES. 


79 


Taking up the rattle, she turned it idly round and 
round in her fingers. It was the creaking wooden 
rattle which, in the hands of Proven§al children, does 
such duty between Maundy Thursday and Easter 
Eve, while the church bells are silent, or, as the 
peasants say, ‘all gone to Rome.’ Then the children, 
not content with having thrown down heavy stones 
during the chanting of the ‘Gloria’ on Holy Thursday 
to set forth the stoning of Judas, go rattling the 
traitor’s dry bones through streets and fields. 

The rattle made Ninette think of church. The 
Easter festival was over, but her mind wandered on 
to the next great holiday which she made a point of 
attending in Grasse ; viz., Corpus Christi Day. That 
was still a month distant. She hoped she might be 
able then to go to Grasse with her aunt Nerta Ghiz, and 
to spread, as had been their custom, a flowery carpet 
when the procession of the Holy Sacrament went up 
the Cours of Grasse. Could she hope that any of the 
men just come back from Tonquin would get leave 
and be in the procession? Would Noel Cresp be 
there ? she would like so much to see him again. 

At that moment a voice close to Ninette’s shoulder 
said, 


80 


NINETTE. 


‘ Good-evening, Ninette.’ 

As the gates of the farm stood open, and as Ninette 
was making a good deal of noise with her rattle, she 
had not caught the sound of approaching footsteps, 
and here was Noel Cresp smiling. He had arrived both 
uninvited and unexpected, but oh ! how welcome, and 
just when her thoughts had turned to him, and to his 
possible appearance on Corpus Christi Day. 

‘ 1 saw you through the open gates,’ he said, ‘ and I 
could not go past.’ 

‘No, indeed, I should think not; ou tu vasseT she 
asked, smiling, and rising from her knees. 

‘ To Le Bar, to see my father. I have got twenty- 
four hours’ leave of absence. So this is my first visit 
to the old folks; is your father at home V 

‘No, peccaire! he is not.’ 

‘ Peccaire l indeed,’ answered Noel, ‘for I am un- 
commonly thirsty. Do you know that instead of 
getting out at Antibes and walking up by Biot and 
Yalbonne, I took the train all the way to Grasse, and 
came round this way on purpose to look you up.’ 

‘ Thank you,’ said the girl, shyly. ‘ You are thirsty, 
and I wish I knew what we could do. I really would 
not advise your going into the house ; you would 


AT THE BEE-HIVES . 


81 


meet the patronne , and she is capable, not only of 
refusing you a draught of wine, but of forbidding you 
ever to put your foot in the place again/ 

And then Ninette coloured ; she had perhaps had no 
right after all to take Noel’s future visits to herself for 
granted, or to exhibit so plainly her wish to see him 
again in that house. 

Noel stood for a moment looking at her. She was 
pretty, decidedly pretty. She was Ninette, and she 
was glad to see him. 

‘ That would never do,’ he said, kindly. ‘ We won’t 
risk it. Though of course, if she were to forbid me 
to come, I shouldn’t for a moment consider myself 
bound to obey her; but I daresay there is a cup of water 
to be got without asking her gracious permission.’ 

By this time they had got outside the gates, mov- 
ing half instinctively out of reach of the farm-house, 
of which the door stood open. But at the gate they 
paused, the two tall cypresses standing up like sen- 
tinels above the girl’s slender figure. They were 
speaking of the swarms, and Ninette narrated how 
one of them had positively settled in her hair and 
neck, but had been got off without inflicting a single 
sting. 


82 


NINETTE. 


6 Who did it for you V asked Noel. 

4 Oh, Toussaint,’ said Ninette. 

4 Lucky fellow ! I wish I had been in his place,’ 
said Noel, thinking, as he looked at her, that he had 
not remembered half her pretty ways. 

She it was who reminded him that he was thirsty. 

4 A little further down the hill, about thirty yards, 
there is a spring, only there is no cup to drink out 
of.’ 

4 Oh, if that’s all, I can lap like a dog ; soldiers 
don’t require to carry drinking-cups. A clasp-knife 
to cut his food is really all that one need carry with 
him. But show me the spring.’ 

The girl led the way smiling, and soon stood 
beside the little source — one which forced its way 
first through a wall, and then through a spout made 
of a hollow reed. It was not easy to go up to it to 
drink because of the pool it had made for itself. 

4 Wait a minute,’ said Ninette ; 4 you can’t lap in 
that mud ; but 1 know how we can manage it.’ 

She folded her dress tight through her knees, then 
walked deliberately into the pool, or rather puddle, 
formed by the dribbling of the spring, then bent 
down and let the water trickle into her hands. They 


AT THE BEE- HIVES. 


83 


were so firmly locked that they really formed a 
cup. 

‘Now lie on the top of the wall and stretch down 
and drink,’ she said ; ‘ but you must make haste, or 
it may leak out.’ 

They were both laughing, but when Noel had 
drunk out of this improvised goblet, and where the girl 
had felt the touch of his lips on her palms, both of them 
ceased to laugh. The young soldier raising his 
glance to hers saw in the gathering twilight Ninette’s 
soft eyes gleaming like glowworms in the grass. 
They walked on together in silence, till the little 
stony path which they followed through the weeds 
and the red sword-lilies ended in the high-road. 

4 Good-night,’ he said, quickly ; and Ninette’s lips 
parted eagerly as she asked, 

4 Shall you have leave at the Fete-Dieu in Grasse?' 

4 The Fete-Dieu in Grasse! To be sure; I had 
not thought of that. I might see you there ; how do 
you go ?’ 

4 Oh, I am sure to be there, for 1 throw flowers in 
the procession.’ 

4 Well, but who takes you there ? — where are you 
to be found V 


84 


NINETTE. 


‘ I’ll tell you ; I get up at four and I go with my 
basket up the hill on to the Carrere road ; there I 
gather the broom-flowers. It takes me quite an hour 
to fill the basket, as the flowers have to be picked 
one by one ; then I walk on to Uncle Ghiz’s house ; 
you know where that is V 

‘ To be sure I do.’ 

‘ They give me breakfast, and then Aunt Nerta and 
I walk into Grasse. By the time we get there it is 
always very hot, and we are glad to leave our basket 
at a friend's house, and to fetch it again after high 
mass is over. There is always time to get hold of it, 
and to be up with the procession as it goes along the 
Cours.’ 

‘And what do you do next?' 

‘ I scatter flowers and sing hymns beside the repo - 
soir at the hospital.’ 

Noel felt somehow as if he heard the hymns 
already, and his eyes caressed the girl. 

‘ Well, if I can I will be at high mass that day. I 
shall be very sorry if I don’t see you, and hear you 
sing.’ 

‘ Oh, for sure you will see me if you look for me. 
Good-night.’ 


AT THE BEE-HIVES. 


85 


c Good-night.’ 

Ninette stood watching Noel as he walked away. 
Worth looking at was her old playfellow, for even 
the uniform of a French private, which is a hideous 
thing in itself, did not disfigure him. In spite of its 
bad fit, and in spite of a yellow collar with 111 on 
it in black letters, Noel was one of the best-looking 
young men in the Maritime Alps. 

Noel- Joseph-Alary Cresp, the son of Joseph Cresp 
and of Rosine Bensa, was in his twenty-fourth year. 
He had regular features, soft, dark eyes, with fine 
lashes, the whitest of teeth, and a forehead of such 
beauty that even a kepi could not disfigure it any 
more than the regulation crop could hide the rich 
dark chestnut colour of his hair. On looking at 
him you became instinctively aware of power under 
the veil of this youthful form and of the common- 
places of his uniform. His father, a carpenter, lived 
in the town of Le Bar, in a house in one of those 
streets where the dark houses hang, as it were, in 
bunches on the northern slope of the town. Beneath 
it was a garden of oranges, and far below the ravine, 
through which, among willows and poplars and sunny 
orchards, the Loup frets its way. 


86 


NINETTE. 


Both Noel’s parents were alive, with their only 
daughter married to a schoolmaster. Rose lived in a 
hamlet on the Loup, and her marriage had taken place 
since Noel’s military service began, so that her hus- 
band was really a stranger to him. He and Rose had 
been playfellows together with Ninette, so now as 
Noel walked homeward he smiled to himself and 
said, 

‘ Poor little Ninette V and then he smiled again. 

Not more than any other man was this young 
private of the 111th, just returned from Tonquin and 
about to get his discharge, not more I say than any 
other fellow, was he insensible to the fact that he had 
just made a conquest. Something in Ninette’s man- 
ner told him so, and her eyes said for her what her 
tongue had not expressed, the words 4 come again.’ 
Certainly he would go again and that before very long, 
and he would see what old Firmin w r as like now-a- 
days. Then, as he was soon to be a free man, able to 
choose both his business and his place of settlement, 
who knows where he might choose to settle, or with 
whom ? 

As he walked he sang, 


AT THE BEE- 111 VES. 


87 


‘ Les pratiques 
Du regiment, 

Yident la barrique 
Tout en chantant 
Ra-ta-plan, ra-ta-plan! etc. 

Les pratiques 
Du regiment, 

Vont en Afrique, 

Tout en chantant 
Ra-ta-plan, ra-ta-plan, 

Ra-ta-plan !’ 

As the sound of his song died away in the distance, 
Ninette walking back to her gate smiled and sighed. 
She, also, not more than any other woman or girl, 
could be insensible to the fact that she had made a 
conquest. That knowledge comes very quickly, and 
it is a very pretty and legitimate cause for a smile ; 
but a woman has so many chances against her in this 
world that even at the moment of becoming aware 
of her conquest, if she smiles she also sighs. 


CHAPTER Vm. 


THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 

Sometimes he angers me 
With telling of the mould- warp and the ant, 

Of the dream-Merlin and his prophecies, 

And of a dragon and a finless fish, 

A clip- winged griffin and a moulting raven, 

A couching lion and a ramping cat ; 

And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff, 

As puts me from my faith. 

Henry IV. y I., V. 

By courtesy the past is ever spoken of as the 6 good 
old days.’ Whether the days really were so good I 
know not ; perhaps they were like our own times, but 
chequered at the best, like the black and white 
marble pavement that St. Louis of France loved. At 
all events they are so spoken of by all persons of 
good breeding, and, of all the institutions of the 
Middle Ages, none was better known or followed 
than the procession of Corpus-Christi Day in Grasse. 
If its glories could not vie with those of Marseilles 
they did run the splendours of Aix very near, and 


THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME . 


89 


crowds used to come from afar to swell or watch 
the procession of the Holy Sacrament. In Pro- 
vence there was no high day more esteemed. In 
northern France the I5th of August has a great 
vogue, especially since Louis XIII. dedicated his 
kingdom in a special manner to the Holy Virgin; 
to say nothing of that period of the second empire 
when a festival of the Blessed Virgin and the Napo- 
leonic legend obtained about equal honours. But 
here in Provence the 15th of August does not, thanks 
to its temperature, lend itself well to pageants and pro- 
cessions. The national feast in July is trying enough, 
but in August the earth is cracked and baked, and 
weary with excessive heat ; but notso on the Thursday 
next after Trinity. Not only has the Christian year 
just run through its cycle of feasts and fasts, but 
June flings a glory over the earth. The fields are 
white to the harvest which may begin to be reaped 
the week after the festival.* The clusters are already 
formed on the vines, every branch that bears not fruit 
has been cut off, the trees are red and gold with apri- 
cots and nectarines, and the streams run like rivers in 


Harvest is general on the coast by the 24th of June. 

7 


90 


NINETTE ; 


a missal, blue, between green banks. This holiday 
seems to set a keynote of joyous expectant thank- 
fulness. The very office of the day, pages which 
stamp St. Thomas Aquinas as a poet as well as a 
theologian, breathes this spirit. This tenderly mystical 
teacher seems to adore in every line the Author of an 
unspeakable gift, and to infer that He will 6 with 
Himself freely give us all things/ 

In the old times, when the provincial nobility lived 
in Grasse, when it had a bishop and chapter, and when 
its consuls andprud'hommeswere powerful, every house 
rivalled with the other in preparations for this proces- 
sion. Not only were the reposoirs gay with fruit and 
flowers, with the earliest sheaves and the latest roses, 
but all the family plate was displayed, the silver 
sconces of the one house being only equalled by the 
gilt salvers of the other. Then were uniforms brushed 
up and scabbards polished, lutes and viols restrung, 
old brocades shaken out from the coffers where they 
lay, while rose-wreaths and pennons of every hue 
fluttered along the Cours. The guilds had their 
reposoirs , so had the convents, and the very hospital 
had its own. On that day wounds, and bruises, and 
even death itself were forgotten, and men, dying on 


THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 


91 


pallets which only charity had paid for, caught 
through the open window the chanting : 

4 Se nascens dedit socmm ; 

Convescens in edulium ; 

Se moriens in pretium ; 

Se regnans dat in praemium. 

4 0 salutaris hcBtia !....* 

In the procession walked the Viguier du Roy , the 
consuls, and magistrates, the judges en mortier, the 
bishop and chapter with mitre and crozier, the black 
Benedictines, the white Cistercians, the black and 
white Dominicians, and the brown Capuchins, the 
seminarists, the veiled school-children, the halt, 
the maimed, the poor, and the stranger within 
the gates, as well as the nobles with their smiling 
maidens, and their patched and powdered dames. 
All this is a thing of the past. Not only are the swords 
of the nobles rust, and the convents turned into count- 
ing-houses and factories, but Grasse is no longer an 
episcopal city. Its great ladies went into emigration, 
and its silver plate, its statuettes, and its reliquaries 
were all melted up during the Revolution. The 
place now bristles with steam-chimneys, and though 
great, far greater, fortunes are now made within its 
precincts, men go to spend them in Cannes or Nice or 


92 


NINETTE 


Paris, and ‘ the Powers ’ have ceased to pay honours 
to the procession of the Fete-Dieu. For the poor, 
however it is still a great day, and they still carpet 
its course with the golden blossoms of the broom. 

Ninette, educated piously, and accustomed as a 
child to the shadow of a presbytere and steeple, would 
not for worlds have missed either the service or the 
sight. On this occasion she had also a reason of her 
own for wishing to go to Grasse. Till the last moment 
she was not, it is true, safe against her step-mother’s 
interference with her cherished project, but luckily 
no remark was made on it. Toussaint again con- 
sented to mount guard over the Maigrana, and 
Ninette with a beating heart began her prepara- 
tions. 

She wished that she had a prettier gown, and she 
accordingly passed her wardrobe in review. Alas ! 
alas ! how empty is the trunk of a poor little girl who 
is honest, and of whose wants no one takes heed. 
Ninette’s contained but three homespun chemises, a 
black bodice only a little less worn than the one she 
had on, two pairs of stockings of her own knitting, and 
a white veil, worn at her mother’s wedding, washed 
for her own first communion, and in use ever since 


TIIE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 


93 


on processional occasions. Beside it lay a piece of 
wax candle, a withered citron, and her paroissien. It 
suddenly occurred to her that she would take the 
book with her. She was not much given to reading, 
and seldom if ever opened the volume, but she knew 
that there were good things in it, and it would 
have a dignified appearance in church, and surely 
act as a porte-bonheur. Was there not inside it 
a picture of her mothers patronne St. Elizabeth, 
and on another card a big, red 4 Sacred Heart,’ 
one of those painfully realistic efforts to which 
poor Ninette attached an amount of significance in 
proportion to its terrible realism. Beside it lay a 
little needle-case which had belonged to her dead 
mother, and, oh joy I below that was a blue silk ker- 
chief which had also belonged to Eliza Rosingana. 
This, if tied over the black bodice, must, along with 
the veil, suffice to transform the girl’s well-worn 
clothes into a gala costume. 

She arranged all this in her empty basket, and lay 
down but not to sleep. Her thoughts wandered off 
first to Antibes, then to theCresps, and then back again 
to Antibes, and she wondered, as the day began to 
break, whether Noel would really get leave, and take 


94 


NINETTE. 


the early train to Grasse ? Upon the hill-side, while 
she gathered the broom-flowers, she could catch 
sight of the towers of Antibes, their tops just visible 
over the wooded hills. Later she could even see the trail 
of steam from the morning train. How beautiful from 
the mountains and across the blonde plain it looked ! 
— perhaps it was bringing her friend ? A cry of glad- 
ness broke from her lips, she clapped her hands, and 
shouted aloud, 4 Antibou ! Antibou V and then went 
down to the road with her golden burden, singing 
softly to herself, till her grand-uncle’s house came in 
sight. 

Ghiz's farm was the largest and the sunniest of the 
homesteads on that side of the road between Grasse and 
Le Bar. An orange-farm stretched in front of it, and 
before the door there was an oleander of great height 
and girth, out of which fluttered a flight of doves. 
While they whirred and cooed above her head the girl 
entered. 

Anfos Ghizand his sister Nertawere in the kitchen. 
Nerta, an elderly woman, with more hair visible about 
her mouth and chin than under her cap, was dressed 
becomingly for the festival. She had on a pair of 
black silk gloves, and carried a prayer-book inside 


THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 


95 


one of those black stuff covers which nuns affect so 
much. In fact, there was something of the sceur 
touriere about this woman who had kept a curb’s 
house for many years, and who now, in the approach 
of her sixty-fifth summer, kept house for Ghiz, the 
wizard-doctor. That a woman famed for her ortho- 
doxy, for her acquaintance with ritual, and for the 
scrupulous fulfilment of her own religious duties, 
should dwell with a man known to be an unbeliever 
and suspected of sorcery, was a common subject of 
wonder in the arrondissement of Grasse. But brother 
and sister, in spite of their wide divergences, were 
profoundly attached to each other, with that attach- 
ment which is at first inherent in kindly natures, and 
which the trials and experiences of life only tend to 
heighten. The world, if it separates chief friends, does 
also draw closer many a tie of which, but for life’s hard 
and bitter teaching, men and women would scarcely 
realise either the sacredness or the value. Brother 
and sister had moreover one taste in common, devotion 
to Ninette the grandchild of their youngest married 
sister, the child of their poor niece Eliza, dead so 
young and forgotten apparently by a man who had 
married again unworthily. Nerta, however much 


96 


NINETTE. 


scandalized - she might feel at her brothers utter- 
ances, could not, after her retirement from domestic 
service, have readily lived an unoccupied or selfish 
life. Here she shared the career of a man who 
was sought after by all his poorer neighbours. She 
hoped ever against hope that her brother would one 
day, perceiving the error of his ways of thinking, 
cease from scandalizing her ears by his ‘skimble- 
skamble ’ talk against holy mysteries, while she would 
have been vexed indeed had there been any falling-off 
in his practice or his reputation as a healer. 

Nerta held that from interceding for men’s souls to 
healing their bodily diseases there is but one. step, 
and she had an intense belief in Anfos’ power of 
setting broken bones, which was supposed to have 
descended to him from a long line of bone-setters. 
Her orthodoxy objected to his being spoken of as a 
wizard ; for sorcery is abhorrent to the devout mind, 
but she did like to hear him called ‘ lou cahiscou* 
di sabentj literally the precentor of knowledge. He 
was, in truth, a man of much experience in drugs 
and simples, in weather, and in natural phenomena, 
and was so undeniably successful in the treatment of 


Capiscuola, or cabiscol, precentor of an abbey. 


THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 


97 


broken bones that on no year had he less than 
fifteen hundred visitors. Fees he was not allowed 
to charge, or even to accept, since no one who has 
not got a diploma, and who does not pay his patente 
as a medical man, is permitted to do so. But no 
law, human or divine, could prevent Ghiz’s fifteen 
hundred visitors from sending him presents. Some- 
times it was a ham, sometimes it was a bottle of 
white wine wherewith to wash down the rasher; 
sometimes it was a basket of figs, or a partridge, a 
big gourd, a setting of eggs, or a comb of honey. 

His clients were of two kinds : those who most 
feared his maleficent influence, and those who most 
esteemed his beneficent powers. And so Ghiz lived 
on their subsidies more generously than he could have 
done on the proceeds of his own orange-farm, while 
his sister distributed the gifts of his more wealthy 
patients among the starving and the hapless. 

On this June morning there was nothing of the 
make up of a wizard about Ninette's kind grand-uncle, 
neither in his large soft frame, nor stooping head, 
nor in his light blue eyes. The house was not quite so 
guiltless of mise-en-scene . There was a big black oak 
cabinet, with shelves full of simples and of squat- 


98 


NINETTE. 


shaped bottles and flasks, and, if the classical toad 
of the necromancer was absent, there was a vipers 
skin, along with many bundles of herbs, while, dan- 
gling from the roof’s centre rafter, there was the skele- 
ton of an odd globe-shaped fish well set with spines. 
These probably exercised a certain effect on the un- 
educated women who came, full of hopes and fears, 
to consult this privileged man : one who, possess- 
ing the strange power of reading what passed in 
their insides, might therefore be credited with the 
scarcely stranger power of reading the future. Be- 
sides these rarer faculties, Ghiz had the gift of 
music, which explained the presence in one corner 
of the room of the long narrow tambour ein of Pro- 
ven9al merry-making, and of the guitar which hung 
near a print of Napoleon at St. Helena. 

Ghiz’s father had been a moustache of the first empire, 
who had rejoined Napoleon when he passed through 
Grasse, and got a wound at Quatre Bras. Another 
relation of Ghiz had been a regimental doctor of the 
grande armie , and it was from his books that Anfos 
Ghiz had picked up the little, the very little, medical 
knowledge which went to make up his stock-in-trade. 

He had a patient in the house at this very moment. 


THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 


99 


a young woman become half-witted from epilepsy, 
who sat at the other side of the kitchen table, turning 
her feet round its leg, and laughing vacantly. Ghiz 
had given her a breakfast of rice-soup, and her 
mirth at this moment came from the prospect of 
being permitted to dip into a basket of ripe apri- 
cots. But her case had none the less given rise 
that morning to a furious argument between the 
brother and sister. Nerta wished to take the innocent 
with her to Grasse, in hopes that, during the mass, or 
during the procession of the Holy Sacrament, a 
miracle of healing might be worked in poor Celes- 
tine’s case. Ghiz refused to let his patient be exposed 
for hours to a very hot sun, and Nerta reproached 
him for losing an opportunity that might never recur. 
Miracles, she argued, had been worked before, and 
might be worked again, but how could they be 
worked for those who wilfully neglect the means of 
grace ? 

4 Miracles P said the wise man, chuckling to him- 
self ; 4 one to be worked by seeing a foolish old man 
carry some enchanted bread, and a thousand fools 
following him ; pretty miracle ! You women are all 
ready to admire and to wonder, and yet every day the 


100 


NINETTE. 


dandelion and its winged seeds is wonder enough for 
those who have eyes to see it. Why should dande- 
lions cure a dropsy ? And why should the eggs of one 
bird be covered with dots, and another be pale green 
inside ? What does the bird know about that? How- 
ever, none are so blind as those who won’t see, and, 
except getting a fit of her falling-sickness in a hot 
sun and a crowded church, I should like to know what 
Celestine could expect to do to-day in Grasse V 
4 Pray to the boun Diou, uncle/ put in Ninette at 
this stage of the argument, while the innocent under 
discussion kept smiling and twirling in her chair. 

4 1 don’t know a boun Diou ; I only know the Eternal 
Principle, the Supreme Being/ 

4 Don’t say such horrible things before two young 
creatures. One would think you had lived all your 
life with Protestants, and yet I do not believe that 
you have ever spoken with one in your life/ 

4 Anyhow, eat a morsel before you go/ said Anfos 
Ghiz, kindly; then, looking at Ninette, he cried, 

4 Eh I what a holiday face we have got on to-day/ 

4 Have I, uncle ? 1 am so glad of it/ 

4 Glad of it I Then I hope your aunt will keep her 
eyes on you to-day. Girls think of marrying trom 


, THE WIZARD-DOCTOR AT HOME. 


101 


their cradles to their coffins ; sweethearts and wed- 
dings and all the rest of it. Does he stay in Grasse, 
or does he come from Cannes or Vence'T 

‘From none of those places, uncle ; perhaps from 
nowhere at all, for sweethearts are not so plentiful for 
us poor girls.’ 

‘ Are they not ? In my time a girl, poor or rich, was 
like honey, no keeping the flies away from it, and your 
poor mother was married before she was your age. 
The more’s the pity of it ! Many a thing has changed 
since then, so that, perhaps, all is changed too.’ 

Ninette, who was in reality treading upon air, 
shook her head demurely, and said, ‘ All changed, all 
changed !’ and then followed her aunt into the road. 
Nerta’s feelings were still ruffled. 

‘No one,’ she said, ‘would believe that this man’s 
house is kept by a sister who can read the gospel for 
the day, repeat her rosary, light a candle, and lay out 
a corpse as well as any woman for fifty leagues round. 
The pity of it is that he has no taste for these things, 
only for what he calls the secrets of nature. I have 
asked him a dozen times who made nature ? and he 
never can tell me. Of course he can’t. He is only 
just not as bad as that mad Englishwoman.’ 


102 


NINETTE. 


4 Who was she, aunt V 

6 Do I know how she was called, or where she came 
from ? But there are nests of them down there in 
Cannes. She was drawing pictures beside the road, 
and asked me for some milk for her breakfast. I 
made her welcome to the milk, but not to tell me (a 
woman fresh from a presbytere, and from the funeral 
of that eminent servant of God, the late Cure Audi- 
bert, whose soul rest in peace !) that it was wicked to 
pray to the Holy Virgin, or to kneel during the 
mass. I hope my brother does not go so far as that ; 
and I kept him well away from that wicked woman, 
but he says of the things that give me most consola- 
tion that they are just like 

44 L’onguent de Mestre Arnau* 

Que ne fa ne ben ne man.” 

But here we are, Ninette, close to the town. Put 
your veil on now, and we can leave this basket at 
the baker’s before we go into church.’ 

* Arnand do Yillenenve, born in Provence 1238 : the discoverer of 
sulphuric, muriatic and nitric acid, and of alcohol. 


CHAPTER IS, 


AT THE PROCESSION OF CORPUS COUISTI. 

LTiomme a besoin de fetes. L’Eglise le sait, et elle y a pourvn. 
Seule elle est capable de donner an peuple les fetes qui lui procurent 
des Emotions dignes de son ame, et cette joie rare oil la conscience est 
satisfaite comme le cceur et les yeux. Le temple est ouvert & tous. 
Toutes les ricbesses, toutes les pompes reservees ailleurs aux princes 
sont offertes ici anx yeux dn chr^tien. Elies reinvent et glorifient son 
humble existence, et lui apprennent que dans l’Eglise, et la seulement 
les petits et les pauvres sont comme de nobles enfants de Dieu. 
L’Eglise est tout pour le peuple : sa vie, sa foi, son esp&rance : les 
statues et les tableaux sont sa bibliotheque, oil il lit k livre ouvert 
l’histoire de ses destinees. 

Monnin. 

I got me flowers to strew Thy way : 

I got me boughs off many a tree : 

But Thou wast up by break of day, 

And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee. 

George Herbert. 

The church was already crowded when Nerta and 
Ninette reached it, indeed the sound of the pealing 
bells had died away in the town, and the i Gloria * 
had begun before they had made their way up the 
left-hand side of the nave. The great southern door 
was wide open for the occasion ; it opened upon 


104 


NINETTE . 


Vauban’s steps, and on those steps there clustered a 
nondescript crowd of chubby-faced children, and of 
those vagrants of no particular occupation who 
always make their appearance at festivals. Among 
them might be discerned a sprinkling of the more 
strong-minded burghers, the men whose political creed 
prevented them bending the knee in any church but 
who for old sake’s sake retained a sneaking kindness 
for this great summer holiday, if not absolutely for 
the procession of the Fete-Dieu. 

When Ninette at last got a place it was on a 
bench, wedged in between two stout maid-servants. 
Her aunt, more fortunate, obtained a chair beside 
one of the pillars, and was soon immersed in her 
devotions. Ninette, remembering the prayer-book in 
her pocket, pulled it out, and began to read it, rather 
at hazard it must be admitted, but still much to the 
admiration of the two maid-servants, who had no 
books, but who crossed themselves at intervals. The 
organ panted and pealed, the incense-cloud rose, and 
the bright sunbeams that straggled through the 
windows of the clerestory fell on the crimson hang- 
ings and on the bent heads of the crowd. From the 
choir-stalls came the chant, i Cibavit eos. f (‘ I should 


AT THE PROCESSION OF CORPUS CHRIST I. 105 


have fed them also with the finest wheat-flour, and 
with honey out of the stony rock should 1 have satisfied 
them.’) When the epistle was finished Ninette saw 
the book lifted over to the gospel side, and at this signal 
the whole congregation rose to their feet. Tall candles 
burned on each side of the desk on which the gospel 
lay, and, while the censer swung before it, a voice 
sang, 4 Oculi omnium .’ (‘The eyes of all wait upon 
Thee, 0 Lord : and Thou givest them their meat in due 
season; Thou openest Thine hand: and fillest all 
things living with plenteousness.’) 

What a wonderful story of plenteousness I Six- 
teen years had little Ninette lived, she had seen fair 
weather and foul, and sometimes though not always 
meat in due season, but of plenteousness no one had 
ever spoken to her. Here was this strange promise ! 
She had had gladness that morning upon the hill- 
side among the broom flowers, and if Noel were 
really to come to-day, it would indeed be a joy, but 
she had not seen him as yet. There had been two 
privates of the 111th near the door whose uniforms 
had made her heart beat for a moment, but neither 
of them were Noel. 

Meantime the bell rang loudly, and, as the 
8 


106 


NINETTE. 


choir-boys streamed back into the chancel and with 
their burning candles fell into their places, the 
people knelt again. Ninette prayed, but this time 
without the help of her book. Her heart being 
moved that morning by a new sense of her own 
wants and of her heavenly Father’s bounteous Power, 
she prayed as she had never done before, and when 
she next rose and looked round, she became aware 
of Noel in the centre aisle beside her. He had come 
in late, and when he first recognised the girl she had 
been standing with the sunshine making gules and 
azure both on her pathetic face and on her parted lips. 
Their eyes met, and Noel, folding his arms, stood still 
where he could see her, feeling, as he told Ninette 
afterwards, as if his heart had gone soft within him, 
like a ripe pear! When the procession began to 
stream out of the church, he saw Nerta Ghiz shaking 
out the folds of the white veil, as it lay over the girl’s 
head and shoulders, and then they hurried out 
together to fetch their basket of flowers. 

Noel came up with them again on the Cours. By 
this time Ninette’s colour had risen, and, standing 
under the shadow of the hospital walls, she made a 
picture which an artist would have stopped to catch. 


AT THE PROCESSION OF CORPUS CHRISTI. 107 


Her dark-blue apron was full to overflowing of the 
golden blossoms of the broom, and the broken light 
under the soft folds of white muslin set off her 
modest, plaintive beauty. 

It is over a deep carpet of the broom-flowers that 
the Holy Sacrament is carried up the Cours of Grasse. 
The procession then halted at the reposoir prepared 
for it, the bells rang loudly, and only about a tenth 
of the bystanders kept on their hats. They were 
either radicals of advanced opinions, or astute persons 
anxious to catch the votes of those fellow-citizens 
who are so truly advanced as to have reached the twin 
goals of complete infidelity and complete illiberality. 
Nerta and her niece at least felt this morning that they 
were discharging a religious duty, and, holding them- 
selves to have been fed with spiritual nourishment, 
they did not feel themselves either too ignorant or 
too poor to offer their mite of praise. So out on the 
midsummer air floated the hymns, for this was a 
genuine holiday, and, in spite of those disposed to 
curse or to blame the prayers repeated for six 
hundred years,* it was enjoyed as such. 

Ninette, it must be confessed, had felt a timid im- 

* Instituted by a bull of Pope Urban IV., 1264. 


103 


NINETTE. 


patience to meet Noel again. Under the arcades 
of the Place-des-Aires there was some shelter from 
the sun, improvised meals were even eaten under the 
trees, and there Ninette and Noel, meeting, shook hands. 

Nerta, as she shook hands with Noel, congratulated 
him, less on his return from Tonquin than on his 
presence here to-day. The times, Nerta remarked, 
were evil ; many now forsook the God of their youth, 
and turned their back on the steeple of their native 
place, so it behoved all who respected themselves to 
show reverence for holy things and holy places. 
Noel assented ; he would, in truth, have assented to 
anything at that moment, for watching Ninette, as 
she took off her veil, he was like a man under a spell. 
She looked different, somehow, to-day, and he felt 
unaccountably shy. It could not be on account of 
Aunt Nerta’s presence, since she was very kind, and 
began talking of their youth in Le Bar, and of the 
good curd Andibert, who had been so indulgent to 
them all as children. Why was he afraid ? because the 
girl’s eyes had got such a beseeching expression, or 
because the curls in her neck looked soft and like a 
child's ? There was really nothing to frighten him, 
and yet, though he had come all the way from An- 


AT THE PROCESSION OF CORPUS CHR1STI. 109 


tibes to Grasse on purpose to see her, not a syllable 
could he find to say to her. 

Ninette, woman-like, found her tongue first, though 
it was only to say, ‘ Ok tu vasse V This hopelessly 
ungrammatical but familiar locution set him a little 
more at his ease. 

‘ 1 was going to walk home with you,’ he replied ; 
and Nerta, believing her society to be immensely 
advantageous to any young man, gave a gracious 
consent. 

‘ It is going to be very hot,’ remarked Ninette, 
as they emerged from the restful shadow of the 
arcades. 

‘ If you had lived in a rice-ground in Tonkin, as I 
have done,’ Noel answered, ‘ you would find a high- 
road delightful/ 

‘Really?’ said Ninette, and then she laughed, out 
of sheer happiness and contentment. 

Thus they walked along for about an hour, and the 
dust of the long, white road which they traversed 
was held to be a detail by all three ; by Noel because 
he was a soldier, by Ninette because she was happy, 
and by Nerta because she could hold forth on the 
shortcomings of the present age. It was not often 


110 


NINETTE. 


that she had such good listeners. Ninette had no 
wish to speak, and Noel, if he had any, had not a 
notion what to say, or how to express the thoughts 
to which this day had given rise. It seemed to him 
as if this little, soft-eyed thing, so slender and so light 
that she poised on her feet more like a blackbird than 
a woman, really held the keys of a better world for him. 
Yet she had not said or still less done anything. What 
then could be the matter with him, or with her ? He 
was certainly sober, for he had drunk only fair water 
that day, but, if fair water can have such results, 
then wine is vastly inferior to it, and those who drink 
water in the company of such a girl as Ninette are 
not among the disinherited of the world. 

He took the basket she was carrying, and, as he 
noticed her little thin arm, he would have liked to 
have touched it, only he was aware of such a curious 
fear of her. Was it possible that they had romped 
together as children — that they had called each other 
little husband and little wife, that they had run races, 
and quarrelled, and then kissed, and made it up again ? 
And was it possible that this poor little slip of a girl 
was now worried by a step-mother, and made to do all 
the hard work of the farm ? 


AT THE PROCESSION OF CORPUS CHRIST I. Ill 


Nerta offered him hospitality when they reached 
her door, and Ninette’s eyes repeated the offer. But 
Noel had to make the best of his way, first to his 
father’s house in Le Bar, and thence by Vence to 
Cagnes station, so as to get the last train to Antibes. 

Under the oleander-tree, where the ring-doves 
fluttered, they therefore separated, and Noel as he 
walked away wondered if it was from those birds 
that Ninette had learned her tricks of voice, and a 
certain low cooing way of saying, ‘Noel, Noel,’ 
which went into his heart of hearts. He felt another 
fellow. He even wished to be a better fellow when 
he was beside her; which seemed inexplicable as 
his experience of women in barrack-life had been un- 
savoury enough, and, besides, who has not been told, 
at twenty-four years of age, that all the mischief in 
the world is worked by women? Now, sweet as she 
looked, and sweetly as she spoke, this Ninette was, 
after all, the beginning of a woman; nay, perhaps, if 
her eyes told the truth, she was one already. 


CHAPTER X, 


A SNARE SPREAD. 

All kinds and degrees of value come largely, and sometimes exclu- 
sively, from causes with which the owners or producers of valuable 
things have nothing to do. Most especially is this the case with those 
who live by the labour of their hands. The value of that which they 
alone have to sell depends entirely on the desires, or on the knowledge, 
or on the powers of other men, and it occasionally happens that sudden 
and great additions accrue to them upon that value, which they have 
not only done nothing to secure, but which it has been entirely out of 
their power either to expect or to foresee. There is no phrase so rich 
in fallacies as the common phrase that labour is the only source of 
wealth. 

Duke of Argyll. 

While Ninette was building up a world of her own 
— a world of new love — in which Noel Cresp was 
king, and asking herself what he was likely to do 
when his military service closed, her father was 
equally busy turning in his mind the probability 
of getting a speedy sale for his property. But many 
weeks had now elapsed without his hearing anything 
more of Sube’s intentions. He had not even seen 
the broker again. Ninette had met him once driving 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


113 


along the road, when he had stopped and had offered 
her a lift ; but, her Uncle Ghiz’s house being in sight, 
she had been able to escape the proffered civility. 
He had however told her that she was prettier than 
ever, and had even offered to take her to Nice, to see 
an agricultural exhibition, and the dog-show there. 
Ninette had replied with a laugh, that Biondino, 
though really too pretty to have rivals, was cer- 
tainly too sly to allow himself to be compared with 
any other yellow dog, so that she would have to stay 
at home with him. 

The animal was at her heels while she spoke, 
for he generally was the girl’s guardian in her lonely 
hours. She had only to whisper to him, ‘ a ganto 
lou loup ! es un loupV (‘It is a wolf! seize the 
wolf!’) to raise Biondino’s choler, and to induce 
him to put his teeth into any adversary however 
formidable. Since that day the broker had not been 
seen in the neighbourhood, and soon after the 
Fete-Dieu the farmer learned that Sube was really 
absent, having taken the steamer from Nice to Ajaccio. 
Despondency then seized upon Firmin, and he began 
to have an uneasy sense that Sube had changed his 
mind ; nay, perhaps that he had never had any very 


114 


NINETTE. 


serious intention with regard to a property which was 
however so conveniently situated as to point it out as 
an investment for a rich bourgeois of Le Bar. 

The poor man wandered aimlessly under his dying 
olive-trees. The disease to w r hich they were suc- 
cumbing, and which, in the last dozen years, has 
been the cause of untold loss in the arronclissement 
of Grasse, could not be stamped out on the minutely 
sub-divided lands of a peasant proprietary. The trees 
had first been starved, and then worms and microbes 
had fastened on them, and disease had finally paralysed 
labour. Firrnin rehearsed all his losses, and they 
were many ; the barren trees, the bad seasons, and 
the fall in the price of violets. Since all his neigh- 
bours had, like himself, turned to the perfume trade 
as a means of making their terraced fields pay, the 
result had been that the price obtained this spring for 
violets had not left any margin for profits, when the 
expenses were paid. So Hugues Firrnin, while own- 
ing land and able to labour, asked himself whether 
even the possession of capital would cut the knot 
of the present difficulties, at a moment when the 
opportunities for disposing of production were both 
so insufficient and so insecure ? 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


115 


Worried, and anxious to hear farther particulars as 
to the movements of Sube, he went into Grasse to 
consult Monsieur Vassall, and to obtain, if possible, 
a respite for a payment that was due. The notary’s 
study opened from the Place-des- Aires, and, on 
this hot, June day, it was commendably dark and 
cool. Monsieur Yassall was disengaged, and Firmin, 
pushing the green-baize door open, entered. Behind 
the long table sat the man who knew most of the 
secrets of the neighbourhood, a portly, rubicund 
citizen, proud of a long descent in Grasse, and wear- 
ing that expression of mixed frankness and reserve 
which often characterizes persons in an official posi- 
tion, but beneath which there was, in this instance, 
a really kind heart. Yassall said that he thought 
he could arrange a delay of three months for the 
farmer, though he did not conceal his impression that 
at the end of three months Firmin would be just as 
unlikely to meet his liabilities as he was at this moment. 

Firmin shook his head, and asked if Monsieur 
Vassall had seen Sube of Le Bar lately? No, Mon- 
sieur Yassall had not done so, but believed the man 
to be in Cannes, floating there a new speculation. 
They intended, he heard, to cover the slopes of the 


116 


NINETTE. 


Tanneron hills with villas. The race-course and the 
new bridge over the Siagne, like the improved 
road to Pegomas, and the many drives cut through 
the Mandelieu and Tanneron woods, were the piers 
on which this new edifice of speculation rested. 
Sube had a fancy for racing, always attended the 
races at Nice, and hoped to see them take in Cannes; 
and, that being his present fancy, it was, to say the 
least of it, improbable that he would buy a farm on a 
steep slope near Le Bar, unless indeed he intended 
to have a breeding-stable near at hand. 

‘ He went over the greater part of the property and 
something about it seemed to catch his fancy,’ said 
the bankrupt, unwilling to relinquish his shadowy 
hope. 

i Sube is rich enough to allow himself many 
caprices, and vain-glorious enough to wish to appear 
able to gratify as many more, but, from what I hear, 
this Tanneron plan has his preference, and he is also 
leagued with all the job-masters and coachmen in 
Cannes and Nice. He went with one of them to Cor- 
sica recently to look at some ponies, and I hear that 
the pairs they have brought back are likely to be effec- 
tive on the Promenade-des-Anglais this winter. If 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


117 


you can hear of any other offer I would not have you 
put your faith in that morning walk of Sube’s ; for even 
if he had made you a formal offer he might none the 
less prove a slippery customer. I am sorry that you 
have anything to do with him, but it is an odd and a 
regrettable thing that never does a day pass without 
one’s hearing that man’s name. He has got a finger 
in every pie, and has become a sort of king in this 
district, pulling the wires at all the elections, and 
managing to keep his cleverest strokes of busi- 
ness just within the limits of the law. Nothing 
seems to hurt the fellow either; when everyone else 
was hit by the failure of Rigal’s bank he contrived to 
escape, and positively to have gained by his neigh- 
bour’s losses. But it would be as well to avoid, if 
possible, doing business with anyone so painfully 
acute/ 

There could be no doubt but that public opinion 
endorsed the notary’s verdict on Sube, and nothing 
could be less likely than that Pierre Sube should 
exchange the stir and speculation, and all the clan- 
destine pleasures of city life, for a fig-tree and a dung- 
hill, a pousorogo and a kid. 

It is, however, always the unexpected that happens, 


118 


NINETTE. 


so just when Firmin, considering the matter from the 
notary’s point of view, had relapsed into the inactive 
and hopeless phases of his misery, Pierre Sube made 
his appearance at Le Rouret. 

The farmer was not at home, but his wife was, and 
there, about eight a.m., the two persons who held his 
fate in their hands met, and met in a tete-a-tete. 

Where Pierre sat the light fell full upon him. He 
was both sunburnt and overheated, and, having 
pulled off his neckcloth, thereby disclosed his thick 
bull-neck, while in his red face his eyes, set like a 
pig’s, had an expression of concentrated duplicity. The 
man was determined to carry his point : that was to 
possess himself of Ninette, whose beauty had bewitched 
him, and whose scorn had provoked him. For this 
Eugenie’s assistance was required to turn his day- 
dream into a reality; but, while he took her step-mother 
into confidence as regarded the measures, he felt that 
he must on no account disclose the motive. Could she 
but guess it she was certain to do everything in her 
power to baulk him, or to prevent him ever catching 
sight of Ninette. He had gone to Corsica hoping to 
forget his mad infatuation about the farmer’s little 
daughter, but he had not forgotten her, was piqued 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


119 


at her palpable indifference, and was now determined, 
by fair means or foul, to overcome it. 

‘ Eh hien /’ he began. 

‘ Eh hien /’ replied his hostess, in whose mind the 
past still rankled, and who was unwilling to commit 
herself by commencing the conversation in one key 
rather than in another. 

As she stood with her feet planted, as it were, in 
the very soil of her kitchen floor, frying some crusts 
in a pan, she certainly did not look as if she could be 
easily cajoled. 

‘ Here is a piece of good-fortune,’ he said. 

‘ Which V asked Eugenie, gruffly, and without 
looking at him. 

‘Why, finding you alone ; not only did I not wish 
to see Firmin, the eight of whose lantern-jaws is 
enough to turn milk sour, but I did wish to see you 
alone.’ 

‘Ah!’ 

The accent in which this one word was pronounced 
was rather sarcastic than conciliatory. 

‘ I wanted to see you,' he said again, though he 
would have been puzzled to say why ; so he paused. 
He could always lie, but to-day he could not do so 


120 


NINETTE. 


readily, a deficiency so rare in a Proven 9 al that it 
must in fairness be attributed to the fervent heat of 
the day. 

* Plait-ilT said Eugenie, after the pause had lasted 
for some seconds. 

‘You see I do not know your opinion, and, to 
cut the matter short, I have come to ask you what 
is your wish as to this plan of Firmin’s?’ 

‘ My wish 1’ said Eugenie, turning round with a 
vicious smile. ‘ Since when have you begun to regard 
my wishes V 

‘Ta!ta!ta! cousin, don’t begin to quarrel with 
me ; it’s too hot for either love or war.’ 

Eugenie shrugged her shoulders, and threw down 
her pan with a sharp blow. She was more than 
ready for a skirmish ; but there was something so 
hard and indifferent, not to say so mocking, in her 
cousin’s eyes that she felt it would be a waste of time. 
Dead love once dead would certainly not wake again, 
rail she never so loudly, or reproach she never so 
justly. Eugenie had been thrown over by her cousin 
in the most cool and bare-faced manner, and the last 
time that she had reproached him with his perfidy 
he had added insult to injury, for he had bluntly told 


A SNARE SPREAD. 


121 


her that, as the love had been all on her side, she, a 
woman of nearly forty summers, certainly had no one 
to thank for her mishaps but herself. That home- 
truth did not naturally make the recollection of past 
episodes more palatable. Eugenie had once played 
to win but had lost, and, if she despised the hus- 
band whom she had since married as a pis-aller , 
she did not this morning feel more leniently towards 
her faithless cousin. 

‘ I came, as I said, to ask you what you think of 
Firmin’s plan V 

‘Which plan?’ 

‘ To sell this house and farm, if I, or anybody else, 
will buy it from him.’ 

‘Are you thinking of it?’ asked Eugenie, and the 
woman turned positively pale. 

‘ I spoke of it once, but I don’t quite see my way to 
it. I have placed my money differently, or, at least, I 
am now in the way to do so ; but I want first to know 
your wishes, which will, of course, weigh with me. Do 
you wish to go, or to remain V 

Eugenie was silent. She had long known of her 
husband’s intention, and had made up her own mind 

— nay, she had considered the matter so long, and so 
9 


122 


NINETTE. 


well, that she had her plan of campaign all ready ; her 
object being to free herself of her husband, his family, 
his debts, and his dingy, solitary farm-house, saturated, 
as it were, with debt and cares. If she could but 
once shake its dust off her feet, she meant to return 
to Nice. Snch was her intention, but the question 
was how much of it might it be diplomatic to reveal 
at present to Pierre Sube. No doubt but that if 
he chose he could be of use to her, for was he not a 
freemason, and a powerful person, deep in the con- 
fidence of the persons still more powerful who trusted 
to him many of the secrets of their elections ? Did 
he not possess shares in almost every company on the 
coast? skating-rinks, piers, casinos, railways, tram- 
ways, race-courses, steam-laundries, and many other 
sources of income were his, and was he not also the 
soul of many a caucus meeting, where he promised 
much, and fulfilled little, during moments of public 
emotion ? There was hardly a doubt but that, after 
his warm advocacy of the expulsion of the Princes, 
the Government would do something for him. The 
Princes of the House of Orleans are personally popu- 
lar on the Riviera, and, politics apart, their expulsion, 
considered there as a blow to trade, and likely to 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


123 


depreciate house property, had not been a welcome 
measure ; but Sube had praised it, and had explained 
its necessity to those simple neighbours who had 
meant to manifest their displeasure at it by letting 
the National Festival in July pass unobserved. Such 
conduct on his part was meritorious, and, moreover, 
Pierre Sube had been, in the previous year, veiy 
instrumental in getting up the Exhibition at Nice. 
It is true that the stall which bore his name had re- 
mained to the last without form and void, but still 
he had talked so much, and puffed the affair so 
warmly, and breakfasted there so gaily in such 
showy company, that he might expect a decoration, 
or some more substantial reward, if Monsieur Wil- 
son’s sister, who had a property between Cannes and 
Antibes, would but bring his claims before the Pre- 
sident and his son-in-law. 

All this Eugenie was aware of, and she held it for 
certain that her cousin could place in her hands, if he 
chose to do so, the one thing which (after his troth- 
plight) she had most coveted, viz., a Government license 
to sell tobacco and postage-stamps. A tobacco-shop 
places a woman. It is true that for the Government 
to give one away to a woman is a work of genuine 


124 


NINETTE. 


generosity; it is giving to receive no equivalent in 
return, considering that women have no votes. But 
still women can influence voters ; and, if her cousin 
did but get her a tobacco-shop in Nice, Eugenie was 
willing to leave the Firmins of three generations to 
manage their own affairs and to shift for themselves, 
while she undertook to do her duty by the French 
Republic, whenever that republic should have need 
of her services. 

With all that concentration of purpose which dis- 
tinguishes uneducated people having no other occu- 
pation for their faculties than the pursuit of their 
private interests, Eugenie had for months been 
cherishing her private day-dream. To carry this 
point she had condoned Pierre Sube’s gross offences, 
and had re-opened the friendship with him which her 
own marriage, and the birth and death of her child, 
ought to have rendered impossible. The past it 
was true was bitter enough, but the future she was 
wisely determined to make the best of, and it had 
been with an eye to the tobacco-shop that she had 
in April, 1886, consented to drive back from Antibes 
with her cousin. 

She had managed to bring him back as a visitor 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


125 


and as a near relative, she had even to-day brought him 
to the point of consulting her, yet she was uncertain 
how to handle him. Common-sense warned her that 
an explosion of all the jealousy, grief, spite, and re- 
morse to which she had been a prey since he had ceased 
to be her lover must be impolitic. She must either put 
a knife into Pierre at once, or suppress both her past 
sorrow and her present wrath. There could be no 
middle course. So she smothered them all down, 
giving no other vent to her temper than by digging 
her fork into the crusts which she had in her pan till 
they were fairly riddled with holes. 

How was she to enlist Pierre in her scheme, con- 
sidering that there was to be no part or parcel of it 
which would be profitable in any degree to the 
donor 'i It was very unlikely that Pierre would work 
for no reward. Yet, had she but known it, he, for his 
part, was just as anxious to find the best approach to 
her, and to discover the bait to which she would rise. 
She moved restlessly about the room. At last Pierre 
said, impatiently, 

i Well, we must come to some decision before the 
lugubrious Firmin turns up here. Husbands always 
do come home when they are not wanted.’ And he 


126 


MNETTE. 


smiled so meaningly at Eugenie that she felt the 
pang of their former intimacy sting her like a viper. 

4 Do you wish to sell this farm, or are you more happy 
here V 

4 Happy V she exclaimed ; and then, to the amaze- 
ment of her visitor, she flung herself on a chair, laid 
her head on the table, and wept aloud. The storm 
that had rolled up unsuspected through such years of 
solitude, heart-burning, and bitterness had burst at last. 

Sube first moved uneasily on his chair, drumming 
on the table w r ith his nails, till, seeing that she con- 
tinued to weep, he rose, yet on second thoughts he 
only put his hands into his pockets. No man likes 
to see a woman’s tears, and the tears of Eugenie were, 
to do her justice, so rare that anyone might have 
been startled by them. But she recovered herself 
before her cousin had made up his mind how to treat 
her case, with caresses, with bluster, or with banter. 

4 Bah I’ she said, 4 there am I crying ! I don’t know 
when such a thing happened to me before. It’s long 
enough ago since I last wept. I did not even weep 
for my poor little P6pe ; I was far too angry ; I was 
furious with you, and angry at God for taking away 
the child, just to punish me — me only,’ she added 


A SNARE SPREAD. 


127 


under her breath, and looking at Sube with a re- 
proachful glance. 

‘ Oh, if you are going to bring all the living and 
all the dead into the business, I wash my hands of it, 
and of you. What do you want?’ 

That at least was a plain question, yet Eugenie, 
for fear of a refusal and not sufficiently sure of her 
ground, did not at once give it a plain answer. 

4 You see,’ she said, 4 1 was not meant to live between 
a wash-tub and a dung-hill. I regret all that is to be 
seen in a town ; here I have nothing to look at. Where 
are the shops, and the jingling pony-carriages, and 
the gallery-seats at the theatres, and the playbills on 
the walls, and the posters ? I declare I should be 
glad to read one again, red, green, or yellow, if it 
was only to say that a man had lost his umbrella, or 
a lady her * 

i Reputation/ broke in Sube laughing, and over- 
joyed that the tears at least had come to an end. 
i Capital ! that’s capital !’ he said. 4 Reputations are so 
commonly lost in Nice that you might sweep them up 
at the street corners. So you really would like to go 
back to Nice? It is a charming town, made for those 
who know how to live. You would, of course, have 


128 


NINETTE. 


to find something to do; though I credit yon with 
having laid something aside. You have kept a pear 
to slake your thirst with somewhere, have you not?’ 

Eugenie was not disposed to be rashly communi- 
cative about her means. There was no use in being 
so frank as to make a future appeal to her cousin’s 
purse needless. So she replied, cautiously, 

4 Oh ! I am not in want ; I should not want, though 
it’s no thanks to t/iem,’ she added, looking round with 
a venomous expression at the empty chairs which, for 
the moment, represented the persons of her husband 
and step-daughter. 

4 Well, well, I am only speaking for you ; I am only 
thinking of your welfare.’ 

Eugenie wiped her mouth with her apron to hide 
the bitterness of her grin, and her cousin went on : 

4 1 might, I daresay, invest what you have got better 
for you. I know a good many people who could be 
of use to you, not here of course, but, plague take 
them, they won’t, as a rule, do anything for one 
unless one has them, so to speak, by the neckcloth, 
and one can give a good pull at their throats. How- 
ever, things might be worse. You have a little 
parcel of bank-notes of your own somewhere : and 


A SNARE SPREAD. 


129 


quite right too! Women, I often remark, manage 
these things better than one would give them credit 
for — they seem to know the benefit of keeping money 
when they have got it. It is like their reputation ; it 
sometimes don’t answer to be without one ; that’s the 
way of it ! And you know me well.’ 

Eugenie gave a sort of gasp ; lascivious, subtle, 
double-faced, false, cruel her cousin was, and she 
knew it all by heart. 

4 When I undertake a thing I seldom fail. This 
farm will not feed five mouths. Firmin must have 
been a fool to suppose it could. Some one must 
leave it, and go somewhere to earn something, and if 
once you were out of the scrape we might get you set 
up with a tobacco-shop in Nice.’ 

Instinct must have guided Sube to the very point 
to which Eugenie wished to bring him. 

4 Established so you would be a bourgeoises and 
would see a great many people ; you would go to the 
theatre, and I would give you my arm for any Sun- 
day or holiday that I was in Nice. I give you my 
word to try to get this done for you, and you know 
that my word is as good as a bank-note, and that I 
will see you do not leave this nest of beggars the 


130 


NINETTE. 


worse for what you have already done for them/ 

Eugenie Firmin listened to her cousin with her 
back turned to him. Here was her day-dream ; only 
as regarded the reliability of Sube’s promises no one 
knew so well as she did that there was but small 
reliance to be placed on them. She continued to ask 
herself why Sube, who had treated her so badly before, 
should be so anxious to please her to-day ? What 
object could he have in view, and in what way was 
he to repay himself? It puzzled her. Could it be 
that he wished to re-open the former good under- 
standing between them ? She had hardly self-love 
enough to make this supposition probable. Yet even 
it had greater probability than the bare hypothesis that 
Sube should do good to anyone from an unadulter- 
ated motive. There was something dark in the affair 
which she dared not investigate. 

Sube refused to wait dinner for the farmer, and, w r hen 
he had taken leave of her, she had to ask herself if he 
did or did not intend to make her husband any offer for 
the farm ? Perhaps the offer would be made through a 
notary, perhaps it would never come ; but, at all 
events, Sube might still fulfil his promise to herself. 
If he did not it w r ould be maddening. Spend another 


A SNARE SPREAD . 


131 


winter in this wilderness she neither could nor would, 
and she was firmly determined, when Michaelmas 
came round, to take, with or without his help, the 
requisite steps for freeing herself from the Firmins 
and their troubles. Still, she was cross and restless 
all day ; she scolded Ninette, kicked Biondino, who 
growled at her in return, and threw the rolling-pin at 
Toussaint, who said nothing at the time, but, to 
punish her, hid it. 

‘ She’ll look for that the next time she happens to 
want it,’ said the hunchback to himself, chuckling, 
and clapping together two palms so horny that they 
rattled like castanets. 

Moreover, Madame Eugenie said nothing to her 
husband of the interview that had taken place in his 
absence. Time, she thought, would show what were 
the broker’s intentions, and she must consider her 
own interests first. Experience had indeed taught 
Eugenie to distrust her cousin, but how furious would 
she have been could she have read his present 
thoughts. 

His calculation had been something like this. Was 
Ninette likely to become his if he bought the farm 
and made the farmer a free man ? or, supposing him 


132 


NINETTE . 


to advance a small temporary loan to Firmin, could 
he not bind the bankrupt hand and foot, and, by 
starving out the family, make sure of his prey ? 

Long before he had reached his own house in Le 
Bar, Sube had cleared up this point to his own satis- 
faction. 

The first thing to be done was to get Eugenie out 
of the way. She was sure to be jealous and to give 
trouble, and, as he really owed her some reparation after 
all that had come and gone, that tobacco-shop would 
be payment in full. He would also advise her, if she 
withdrew herself from the housekeeping of Le Rouret, 
to press for the sum of money owing to her by her 
husband, which was in the first place a lawful debt 
as regarded the past, and would in the second place 
represent the cost of her keep in the future. This 
sum would both help to set her up as a bourgeoise , and 
would be a farther burden round the farmer’s neck. 
Money would be required by Firmin, and then he, 
in his new character of universal benefactor, would 
lend a small sum to the farmer : say two thousand 
francs at a rate of interest which looked well, but 
for which he could distrain when he found the right 
moment, as it would be simply lent & la petite semaine . 


A SNARE SPREAD. 


133 


He could at any moment proceed to extremities 
against the debtor, or ask for Ninette in lieu of pay- 
ment. Necessity would then be the bankrupt’s 
master. No doubt there would be a great fuss about 
it : disgust, reclamations, tears, entreaties, but he was 
hardened against all these arguments, and, as Sube 
himself had just expressed it, a strangling pull at a 
man’s neckcloth is the one irresistible argument. He 
had never seen anyone able to resist it, and it was 
the argument which he was now determined to try 
on the owner of Le Rouret in order to place the cold 
and virtuous beauty at his mercy. 

4 That will teach her to bewitch a man of my age 
and standing,’ he said to himself. * For very little I 
would have married her, but the monkey does not 
deserve it at my hands. She must now take a lower 
place. It will be all that is left to her when they are 
turned out into the road and, with this reflection, 
Ninette’s admirer entered his house. 

It was situated on the south side of the town of 
Le Bar, just under the shadow of the castle, and the 
broker went to bed there that night, like a spider in 
the centre of his web, promising himself the destruc- 
tion of many innocent flies. 


CHAPTER XI. 


TRAPPED. 

Ye gentle souls, -who dream of rural ease, 

Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please, 

Go ! if the peaceful cot your praises share, 

Go ! look -within, and ask if peace be there? 

Yet why, you ask, these humble crimes relate ? 

Why make the poor as guilty as the great ? 

To show the great, those mightier sons of pride, 

How near in vico the lowest are allied ; 

Thus each in all the kindred vices trace, 

Of a poor, blind, bewildered, erring race, 

Who a short time in varied fortune past, 

Die, and are equal in the dust at last. 

The Village. Rev. George Crabbe. 

I’ll take it, as a peril for my soul. 

Measure for Measure , II, 4. 

Pierre Sure, it may be well believed, was his own 
man of business. Seldom, indeed, did he employ any 
intermediary, except on those occasions when he had 
to get some victim into the meshes of the law, or 
could use the law’s technicalities to bamboozle some 
simple client, and screen his own wicked doings. If 


TRAPPED . 


135 


he then invoked a notary’s aid it was not as an 
adviser but as a tool and a stalking-horse; in fact, 
Sube did not even often transact by writing : he pre- 
ferred to do business by word of mouth, when it was 
open to him to bully or cajole, to make the worse 
appear the better cause, and to swear, scold, and 
scream over a bargain with which he was not only 
in reality exceedingly pleased, but which he had 
been working for months to procure. He generally 
wound up by getting some sort of a scrawled testi- 
mony from his victims, and then walked off with the 
scrawl in his pocket-book, while of his own motives, 
threats, promises, or assertions he had left no written 
trace whatever. 

He acted thus at Le Rouret, calling there once 
or twice until he was able to inform Madame 
Eugenie that he had got the promised Govern- 
ment permission, and that she might open her 
tobacco-shop and sale of postage-stamps at Michael- 
mas. An admirable situation he said it was, just 
where the Rue Paradis opens into the Rue de France. 
He advised her to wait till the last moment before 
telling her husband of her intentions, and then firmly 
to demand a thousand francs (which the farmer in- 


186 


NINETTE. 


deed owed her), bnt to offer, if the farmer consented 
to pay the debt, to give her help during the time of 
their vintage. There were a few vines on their 
ground, and at the moment of gathering the grapes 
the temptation of a pair of strong extra hands would, 
he thought, be irresistible. 

The feet of those that bring good tidings ought to 
be swift, but with what kind of steps ought a man to 
approach a house when he comes to put a halter round 
its masters neck? It was a beautiful evening in 
the beginning of vintage when Pierre Sube de- 
termined to bring matters to a point at Le Rouret. 
Ninette bad, during these weeks, been colder and 
more unapproachable than ever, while the beauty of 
her figure and complexion seemed to have developed 
with every week of summer. She must become his, 
and, as a preliminary, Eugenie must go. The farmers 
wife was not likely to do so till she had been paid 
off, and therefore the broker put the notes for two 
thousand francs into his pocket-book, and directed 
his steps towards Le Rouret; nor did he slacken them 
till he reached the vineyard that comes down to the 
high-road. 

Now when I say vineyard, I do not mean such 


TRAPPED . 


137 


vineyards as cover Burgundy, or the edges of the 
Lake of Geneva — I do not even mean a steep hill- 
side, cut by zig-zag paths, and bristling with short 
sticks such as you see in the Rhone Valley — I 
only mean some long fields, parcelles of land under 
different culture, and flanked by low walls of loose 
stones some four or five feet in width. 

Up and down these fields of maize or beans there 
are dotted standard peach-trees, and the drills are 
generally divided by single, or double rows of vines. 
These vines crawl and clamber at their will, sometimes 
from tree to tree, sometimes among the bean-stalks, 
and always over the low walls, which are supposed to 
radiate a greater amount of the sun’s warmth. 

From under leaves already crimson there hang now 
bunches of the grapes; either black, like beads, or 
of the soft fawn colour known as clairette. And 
along the broad walls at Le Rouret clattered the 
vintagers, two men with bare, sun-burned arms, 
broad straw hats, and red sashes round their waists, 
and one woman, whose white chemise made a bright 
flash of light in the picture. Sube, when he first 
caught sight of the white sleeves, hoped that their 

wearer might be Ninette ; but no, the wearer was too 
10 


138 


- NINETTE. 


stout. It could be no other than La Rourette, a& 
the peasants termed the farmer s wife ; and it did 
indeed prove to be Eugenie, with a face of a dark 
bistre colour, heated and exceedingly cross. 

The men, stooping, and dropping their arms for- 
ward as they staggered under the weight of the 
grapes, were laughing, and they went away, still 
laughing, with their burden to the shed, where the 
fruit was already fermenting in tubs. The ground was 
crimson in patches with the blood of the grapes, and 
the air heady with the odour of the must. 

4 Stay where you are/ said the broker to his cousin ; 
4 it is not with you that I have business to do to- 
night, though of course it is all to your interest/ he 
added, in a condescending tone, 4 and for your con- 
venience that I am working.* Then, pushing open 
.the door of the farmhouse, he entered. 

Hugues Firmin was working listlessly, mending a 
graisse or two that had become too torn and ragged 
even for the endurance of a Proven9al. Nor did he, 
when Sube entered, look up from his work. He had 
heard the visitor come in, as he had heard him grind- 
ing the gravel under his heavy feet, and had recog- 
nised his rather wheezy breathing. He could even see, 


TRAPPED . 


139 


without looking at them, the red face, the pig’s eyes, 
the large waistcoat, and the strong, hairy hands of his 
enemy. Seeing, hearing, and feeling all this, Hugues 
Firmin was instinctively ill at ease. 

Sube looked round for a chair, but perhaps because 
the master of the house discouraged the visits of its 
formidable mistress, there was no chair provided in 
the graissier for the use of visitors. Ninette, when she 
came to keep her father company, used to perch on 
the trays, among the corks and the straw, and all the 
withered leaves. But the broker could not do this, 
so he looked about him with a frown, and then said, 
gruffly, 4 Fetch me a chair.’ 

Hugues could not refuse to go for one, and, on 
seating himself, Sube put on an air of simple bon- 
homie which ought to have disarmed suspicion. With 
great directness he said that, having recently engaged 
in a new speculation in Cannes, he was precluded from 
thinking again of buying this farm, but that to oblige 
his cousin, and to enable her to settle herself becom- 
ingly in her new business in Nice, he was willing to 
advance the money which he understood she required, 
and which her husband was not in a position to repay 
her. How much did Firmin require ? 


140 


NINETTE. 


‘You owe her a thousand francs, but if you are 
short of money * 

There was a moment's silence before the farmer 
replied, 

‘ I cannot pay her.’ 

‘ I could make an advance of two thousand. There 
is no difficulty about that; nay, it would perhaps be 
easier for me to find the capital than for you to pay 
me the interest at ten per cent.’ 

‘Ten per cent.!' said Firmin, putting down his 
tools, and looking straight before him. ‘Where 
should I go to find that V 

‘ I say ten per cent. One expects a higher interest 
where there is but an indifferent security, and you 
know that I come after the Credit Foncier/ 

‘ Make it seven per cent.’ 

Sube reflected. His victim was really incapable of 
paying anything with punctuality, but that which he 
wished to do, and to bring about, must be done quickly, 
or it would not be worth doing at all — viz., settling 
Eugenie at Nice, and getting Ninette into his power 
through her father’s utter ruin. The broker, in the 
meantime, had lain down the two notes on the trays, 
but he looked hard at his victim before he replied, 


TRAPPED . 


141 


* No, ten per cent., or not at all, and a la petite 
semaine.’ 

4 Nom de BieuV cried the farmer, growing red and 
then pale, 4 how can that be ? How can I repay it V 

4 When your daughter is married.’ 

‘ Married I she has no gallant that I know of, except 
it be Noel Cresp, and she is so poor that she may 
never make any marriage, and may have to end by 
going into religion.’ 

The broker rose, gave vent to a dry laugh, and 
pushed the two notes towards Firmin. 

* There is a better course than that, and even you 
will I think find it all easier when once your wife 
has left you. You will remember that I am treating 

you to-day as if we were all of one family ’ And 

then the door closed on Sube, and Firmin was left 
staring at the bank-notes. 

He went in search of his wife, but all the time 
he had an uneasy sense of danger, and some very 
strange words rang in his ears — where had he heard 
them before ? — 4 Better a mill-stone had been hanged 
about his neck.’ Those notes were certainly very 
heavy, and the waters that he attempted to ford were 
very deep. How would it end? 


142 


NINETTE. 


Eugenie would not take less than the one thousand 
francs she had started by demanding. It was, she 
said, really less a repayment of any money she had 
advanced since they married, than wages for the work 
which she had done at Le Rouret. 

Her husband growled out that she had ever taken 
care to do as little work on the farm as possible, 
and that she had done the lady for weeks on end. 

4 No work? As if it was not my sweat that I have 
given : what with binding faggots and cooking victuals 
for an imbecillas like you V she retorted. 4 No work, 
indeed 1 Look at my hands. Are they those of a 
lady? Troun di Diou , I won’t budge till I have 
been paid. I had sooner remain here than leave un- 
paid, and, sooner than remain here, I had rather cut 
off my hands. Pay me !’ she added, imperiously, after 
a pause, in which each of the combatants could hear 
the other s fast-drawn breath. 4 Pay, I say,’ and 
Hugues gave her the note, and, adding a curse, ha 
waited until she had disappeared before he also left 
the room. 

Old Petronilla had not had many visits from her son 
during this joyless summer. On this evening how- 
ever he went in, and sat down beside his mother's bed. 


TRAPPED. 


143 


It was dusk as they sat together, mother and son, the 
one accustomed to a solitude which piety and pa- 
tience lit with their beams, the other shut in inside 
the prison, so to speak, of a sunless isolation. In her 
wrapper of dark serge, and with her eap of thick 
white pique , the blind woman not only did credit to 
Ninette’s care of her, but she looked positively hand- 
some, for her thin pale face was set in the frame of 
her hair. It was still soft and abundant, a rare advant- 
age in Provence, where hard work in a Prove^al sun 
soon brings burning and baldness. This head had 
evidently once been of a rich auburn, and the lashes 
that shaded the blind eyes were long and curved. 
There was such a calm energy about this old woman 
that her physiognomy might almost have inspired 
fear, but for the gentle expression of the mouth. She 
certainly was a brave woman, and all her wise words, 
all her endurance, as well as the noble and delicate feel- 
ings of which she had so long given proof, Petronilla 
learns from her faith. She is the good angel, and is 
fitted to be the adviser of her family, and, though 
absolutely penniless, she really gives a great deal ; in 
fact, she is so occupied in giving all that the poor 
give to the poor — tears, prayers, sympathy, and counsel 


144 


NINETTE . 


— that she fails to notice how very little she has ever 
received from anyone, except from Ninette. 

It is however her son who has brought her in her 
supper to-night : peas boiled in water, but over which 
a little oil has been poured ; and she has not only said 
grace after this meagre meal, but has thanked her son 
as he takes away the little wooden bowl, and the spoon. 

4 Is the weather fine to-night?’ she asks, for little 
either of the light, the health, or the pure air of the 
outside world reach old Widow Firmin in her sleeping 
place, 

4 Ye s, well enough,’ replied her son ; 4 too fine for 
all the good it can do us.’ 

4 How so V 

4 The countiy is fertile, the crops fair, the grapes have 
couffles (swelled) since the last rain, the apples and figs 
seem all right, there are two pigs and a kid, and 
Ninette’s poultry picking and scraping about, but 
with all that we are none the less ruined/ 

4 Yet they say that Grasse is such a rich place, and 
that, except corn, everything now sells well.’ 

4 Fairly so, as regards vegetables, and little crops : 
the four-season strawberries are coming in again too 
and they will fetch something/ 


TRAPPED . 


145 


•It puzzles me why the times are so bad/ 

‘What puzzles me most is this. When I was a 
child, I never saw a gold piece, and a bank-note for a 
hundred francs was a curiosity which many an old 
man had never so much as taken between his finger 
and thumb ; now there are as many notes in the 
country as there are leaves on a fig-tree, and yet want 
never was deeper. Explain that to me if you can V 

‘ It seems to me as if our parents complained very 
much of the dime , but now we seem to be charged 
with three dimes at the very least.’ 

‘ Y es, the taxes grow heavier every day, that is 
true, and no hope of their being less. One must 
have gringot for one’s friend, as Sube has, to hold up 
one’s head in these days.’ 

‘ Has he been here again?’ 

‘ He came on Sunday. Of course he gives Eugenie 
reason in everything she does, both in settling herself 
at Nice, and in demanding this payment from me. I 
beg you to observe that the plan was originally 
explained to me as offering an advantage to me, when 
there should be one person less to feed.’ 

Petronilla gave a little sigh. 

‘Pretty advantage I when I have had to repay her 


146 


NINETTE, 


in ready money before I can see her back turned 
on a house to which she has been a curse. Where 
was I to get a thousand francs ? the more so that 
the delay Vassall granted me expires on St. Luke’s 
Day.’ 

Old Petronilla groaned; but she was the first to 
break the silence. 

‘ Have faith in God,’ she said. i I have the great- 
est faith in what He can do.’ 

‘Alas ! 1 no longer have any faith, and there is too 
much to be done.’ 

‘ Not too much for Him ; He has no limits ; call 
upon Him, my son.’ 

Firmin shook his head. In the old days, and 
under the old regime , the French peasant had masters 
who oppressed him. They took his horse, and his 
mule ; they interfered with the baking of his bread, 
and with the sale of his wine ; and it was corvee all the 
year through. Now he is free, but his new friends 
have taken away his Lord, and the world beholds that 
most horrible thing, an impious peasantry. The poor 
are at present flattered, and also in a great hurry, run- 
ning about with tickets in their hands to vote for 
their so-called friends. These friends are of a peculiar 


TRAPPED. 


147 


sort, for they take the Catechism from the children, the 
nurses from the sick, and the priest from the dying, 
and teach the poor to demand instant and sensible 
value for their time and money. A mass of men, 
either corrupted by this new teaching, or easy to 
be corrupted, constitutes society , and it is difficult 
to see upon what basis a society so educated, 
and so composed, can be said to rest. If it has 
not yet broken up it is because France is still 
living on the remains of her old capital, on the Chris- 
tian education of children, the Christian devotion of 
religious women, and the Christian resignation of the 
poor. But this will all be exhausted some day, and then, 
when the peasantry have seen through their present 
flatterers, it is not pleasant to think of what kind of 
reprisals a generation brought up on the catechism of 
Paul Bert may be capable. 

Petronilla was the first to break the silence. 

4 There is one way out of it.’ 

Firmin stamped his foot. 

‘ It’s no use saying smooth things to me,’ he said, 
irritably. 4 Women talk like that to dying folk, and 
even dying folk don’t half believe it.’ 

4 Put the land up for sale by auction.’ 


148 


NINETTE . 


‘What would it bring?’ said the farmer. ‘After 
the mortgages were paid, and the Credit Foncier, 
what would be left?’ 

‘A portion for Ninette.’ 

‘ 1 am afraid not ; she will have to be married with 
her chemise.’ 

And then there was silence, the farmer turning the 
figures and probabilities in his mind, and the blind 
woman praying that her son might be led to make 
this effort. A sacrifice it would be, most certainly 
to herself, as it must entail a break-up of the family, 
and also in some degree a sacrifice to Firmin; for 
one is either a proprietor or one is not — that is to 
say, one either detests the tillage of the soil, or one 
finds the earth and the replenishing of it to be con- 
soling for many worldly ills. The land once sold, there 
would, of course, be nothing left for Firmin but daily 
labour and daily wages. Would he accept them? 
Firmin had lived to middle-age with a hand-to-mouth 
policy, leading, in fact, the life of a man without punc- 
tuality and without virtues, and, under Eugenie’s 
auspices, he had bid fair lately to become one with 
vices, too apt to drown care in the wine-shop ; but 
old Petronilla was valiant, and she would not be dis- 


TRAPPED. 


149 


couraged in an attempt to engraft something like a 
Christian conscience on the debased nature of her 
son ; so she said again, 

4 Put Le Rouret up to auction.’ 

4 1 had hoped to sell to Pierre Sube ; but that proved 
a false hope. I had hoped to be rid of Eugenie, 
when she went to earn a living in Nice, but that also 
has turned to my disadvantage, for now her absence 
has to be bought.’ 

4 Still it is a debt for which she now asks re- 
payment.’ 

4 Debts on the right hand, and debts on the left — 
what is to be the end of it V 

4 So only as it be not a case of an obligation owing 
to Sube. That man comes here to make eyes to 
Ninette.’ 

4 To Ninette I’ shouted Firmin — 4 troun de. Diou! Show 
me him doing that, and I will let out his brains with 
my pruning-hook.* 

4 Hush, hush ! not so loud — walls have ears. Ni- 
nette, poor lamb, keeps well out of his way. Do you 
put up the farm for sale, pay what you owe to 
Eugenie, and then the trifle left will make a little 
portion for Eliza’s child.’ 


150 


NINETTE. 


‘Poor Eliza!’ said the farmer half under his breath. 

‘ She was the only woman I ever loved. Why need 
she die, and why did I marry this * 

‘ Do not blaspheme,’ said the old woman ; but her 
son had already risen, and leaving her had gone out 
into the night. 

He found his wife fagged and cross from a day’s work 
in the vineyard, and also boastful about her future in 
Nice, which by Sube’s help was to be so unlike this 
drudgery on the fields. Firmin, his eyes alight with 
the fierce wrath that he felt against both her and her 
cousin, listened to her for a while, asking himself if 
he should kill her ; but he stood up, and did better 
than that, as he described it to himself. He told her 
abruptly that Sube was paying court to Ninette, that 
she had been cajoled to go off to Nice only to get her 
out of the way of this new flame of Sube’s, but that, 
having been paid to go, she now must and should leave 
Le Rouret, and that on the following day. Eugenie 
listened in amazement, and, before she could answer, 
Firmin after a hideous imprecation had left her. 
He walked into the town and there drank a litre of 
new wine. Lying on a bench at the door of the 
wine-shop with the soft summer night around him, 


TRAPPED . 


151 


lie trolled a tipsy song, then stumbled homewards, 
and fell into a bemused and besotted sleep. 

He had not the courage to tell Petronilla that her 
warning had come some hours too late, since he had 
already accepted a loan from Sube, and a la petite 


semaine . 


CHAPTER XIL 


THE RIVALS. 

The path to the leaf-covered fountain, 

Bears prints of a small, naked foot ; 

Close by, and I jealously count them, 

Are the marks of a man’s heavy boot. 

All’s still at the place of their meeting, 

But my heart it can hear (and it swells) 

Their whispers, his passionate pleading, 

And the water splashed out of her pails ! 

Translated from the Russian of Count A. Tolstot, 
by Countess Leonide P . 

The name of Noel Cresp had not passed unnoticed when 
it was casually uttered by Firmin before the broker, and 
he turned over in his mind the name, state, derivation, 
position and possible interests of the man who bearing 
this name might have chanced or might yet chance 
to cross his path. Not of course that he could have 
anything to fear from such a rival. Master Noel no 
doubt was a son of old Cresp, the carpenter in Le 
Bar. That man, besides being an artizan, was a small 
proprietor. 


THE RIVALS. 


153 


4 The more’s the pity/ thought Sube to himself, 4 as 
he is the less likely to want to borrow money. Own- 
ing land means borrowing and sorrowing. But the 
man, who having a trade and a shop also tills a 
patch or two, and eats his own figs off his own fig-tree, 
can defy both me and my books. Who was his wife, 
I wonder? Oh, a Bensa, 1 remember; only a Pied- 
montese, so I know nothing about her family. Ah ! 
but did not their daughter marry Nicolas Fayet, the 
schoolmaster? To be sure she did. I can get at them 
any day on that side, and I will hang up the teacher 
high and dry, suspending him from all his functions, if 
the Creep family gives me any trouble. I wonder if the 
animal Noel is still with the regiment ? Officers are not 
always perfectly easy to handle. They often have a 
hankering after the Due d’Aumale, or after Robert le 
fort as they call him, and, though their trowsers may 
be red, a flag of that colour, which is my colour, is not 
very well seen by them. I doubt if I could get three 
months in a military prison for Noel Cresp. Some fool of 
a commandant would do, what no official at the prefec- 
ture would dream of, he would write to the newspapers, 
and then that “ Soleil du Midi ” would have it made 

public all over the coast from Marseilles to Genoa, in 
11 


154 


NINETTE . 


twenty- four hours. However, I needn’t worry myself. 
What’s a dusty, little foot-soldier compared with the 
richest man in the canton ? All the same, I think I’ll 
take a walk with her this evening/ 

And with that determination Sube again directed 
his steps towards Le Rouret. Eugenie had gone to 
Nice to examine her new quarters there, and he reck- 
oned on having it all his own way in Ninette’s home. 

Chance indeed did seem to favour him, for, ascend- 
ing to the farm from the high-road, he met Ninette at 
the spring where we once saw her giving Noel a drink 
out of her hands. Ninette was ranging her water -jars. 
Since the mule had died which used to turn the noria 
she had to fetch water at this distance from the house. 
Two heavy green-glazed pitchers stood on the ground, 
and there was a brass one on the terraced wall beside 
her. 

Seeing her enemy approach the girl calculated 
the chances of a retreat, but seeing that to be 
impossible she stood still, with one arm through the 
handle of the brass pot, her bare feet dabbled in 
the spring from whence she had just drawn her supply 
of cold running water. 

‘ You have plenty of water here,’ said Sube, by way 


THE RIVALS. 


155 


of introduction to a conversation to which he meant 
presently to give a more personal turn. 

‘ Yes, this spring, which is but a thread of water to 
look at, never fails, either summer or winter.’ 

‘ So I have heard ; and have not the peasants some 
name for it V 

4 Yes, Couliafiou 9 * 

‘I wonder they did not give it some saint’s name, 
and ascribe some magical powers to it,’ said Sube, 
laughing. 4 Is it good to drink?’ he added, drawing 
closer and fixing his eyes on the girl as he did so. 

4 It’s like any other,’ replied Ninette curtly. 4 But, 
as there is no cup you will have to go without tasting 
it, as these jars are too heavy to be turned into 
drinkin g-glasses.’ 

This she said, privately hoping that Sube would not 
taste of the spring which really had magical qualities ; 
the waters of Couliafiou , when drunk by lovers, 
rendering love immortal and as perennial as their 
source. This big ugly man had nothing to do with 
love ; and she would not for the world have anything 
to do with him. It had been quite a different story 
when Noel drank there, out of her own fast-locked 

* Literally, running imperceptibly. 


156 


NINETTE. 


palms. She remembered that day distinctly ; the 
curly head bent down, the warm lips in her palms, and 
the kind smile when Noel had lifted his face out of that 
odd drinking-cup. When her young soldier had been 
with her at Couliajiou she had then congratulated 
herself that they were many yards distant from her 
step-mother’s ears and eyes ; but at this moment any 
presence would have been welcome to her, and Ninette 
thought regretfully of La Rourette’s absence in Nice, 
and of every yard that separated her from the farm 
when possibly neither her father nor Toussaint might 
be at hand. 

Sube stood still, looking at her. He had not read 
her thoughts. To begin with his habit of easy con- 
quest like his vanity blinded him to this young 
peasant’s repugnance. It also requires some sensi- 
tiveness in a man’s nature, some delicacy and refine- 
ment in his own organization, to enable him to detect 
and interpret correctly those small alterations in her 
voice, her colour, or her gestures, by which a woman 
will betray her secret more unmistakably than by her 
conduct, or than even by her words. 

‘When are you thinking of getting married?’ he 
asked smiling, as if she had not snubbed him. 


THE RIVALS. 


157 


4 That does not concern you. I do not know that 
it even concerns me this evening.’ 

4 How old are you V 

4 1 am seventeen.’ 

4 What ! seventeen ; then you have eaten very 
sparely, or have profited very little by the chestnuts 
and maccaroni you have eaten, for you look more 
like fifteen.’ 

It was true. Utterly out of countenance at 
Sube’s attitude towards herself, and worn with 
the lassitude of heavy daily toil done on the most 
meagre of fare, Ninette, in spite of the beauty of her 
face and eyes, did look like a child. 

4 Come and walk a bit with me.’ 

4 Who then, I V 

* Yes, come up to the wood of cherry-trees. Lads 
and lasses like to go there of evenings, and to amuse 
themselves, you know how I make no doubt,’ he added, 
wfith a leer. 

4 1 have my work to do. 

‘Nothing so pleasant as such a walk would be ; we 
will go arm-in-arm if you will.’ 

4 What an idea I when I have grandmothers soup 
to make, and nettles to cut up for my turkeys. You 


168 


NINETTE. 


could carry these water-jars home for me, if you 
wanted a walk,’ she added, looking round nervously 
to see if help were at hand. 

4 You work too hard — it's that which keeps you so 
thin. You are too thin.’ — Ninette turned away her 
head. — 4 All the same, it doesn’t make you ugly.’ 

Sube was right. Her short petticoat showed the 
firmness as well as the slender contours of her limbs, 
and the bright-coloured cotton kerchief round her 
neck gave additional brilliancy to her eyes. And 
then what eyes I Like pools in a forest. There was 
an indescribable something about this pastourelette in 
her looks, and her attitude, and in her gaze, at once 
so brave and so sweet, that captivated. Sube felt it. 

4 No, you are not ugly, not even when you look cross 
at me — but can’t you talk ? I would like to know 
the colour of your words as well as of your eyes.’ 

4 What sort of a Christian are you to teaze a girl 
who is young enough to be your daughter?’ cried 
Ninette at last, fairly out of temper. 

4 What herb have I trodden on that I can’t be happy 
away from your side,’ he replied, coming up close to 
her. 

4 Let me go home !’ 


THE RIVALS. 


159 


c But you owe me one pleasure, and you have no 
right to refuse it/ 

‘ I owe you nothing in the world, and I beg you 
not to take for granted either that I am likely to walk 
in the cherry-wood with you, or with any man who 
is neither my relation or my friend/ 

‘If you knew how willing I am to be your friend 
you would know what you owe to me/ 

‘ I have never taken a pin, or a penny from you. 
It is true that I came home from Antibou on the 
evening of that holiday, behind your white mare, but 
that was by no fault of mine and I had far rather 
have walked/ 

i All the same you must have seen that I liked 
having you beside me/ 

Ninette shrugged her shoulders, and then seized one 
of her jars with both her hands. Sube placed him- 
self in front of her, so as to block her return to the 
house. 

‘ Did you not see it then ? did you not see it when I 
came here later making-believe to buy this property ? 
and don’t you see it now that I like you ? Why, 
I do not know I You are pretty, you have a face 
like a saint in a niche ; you have the daintiest little 


160 


NINETTE . 


menottes , and the prettiest little petons that I ever saw/ 
Ninette struck one of her feet into the mnd in a 
moment, splashiog it a little in his face as she did so ; 
but he did not frown as he added, 

‘ Pretty as you are lam aware that there are many 
girls prettier and rosier, but you, palotte as you are, 
you have bewitched me/ 

What Sube said was true. He was bewitched ; 
over-mastered by a feeling which from a fancy had 
gradually grown into a passion, and to which jealousy 
to-day had given a spur. A series of emotions for 
which this elderly broker had found no vent, and as 
yet no response, and which he confided to no one, 
had brought about in a coarse, strong-willed man one 
of those sudden explosions which make the astonished 
public ask, ‘ Is the man gone mad V 

To-night at least Pierre Sube was determined to 
force an answer from the girl, and not to return with- 
out one to his home where he had already suffered a 
good deal of restlessness on her account, and where 
his extraordinary comings and goings had worried 
Alary, his old concierge and factotum. 

‘Don’t you see, Ninette/ he said, almost stamping 
his foot, ‘ don’t you see that I care for you ; that I 


THE RIVALS. 


161 


could give you a house and jewels, and plenty of eat- 
ing and drinking ? Don’t you know that I would 
give you all this; laughing all the time to see you 
spending my money, you the little peasant of Le 
Rouret? And do not you think that you might do a 
trifle to please one who since Easter has been so ill 
at ease through your fault V 

‘ It’s by no fault of mine. Never have 1 spoken to 
you of my own free will ; never have I bidden you to 
this house, and I am neither hot nor cold when I see 
you leave it.’ 

‘You can’t prevent my returning to it, however,’ 
retorted Sube, in a tone of bravado ; and then with 
rising excitement he added, ‘Neither would your for- 
bidding me to come to it keep me out of it for an 
hour.’ 

‘ Perhaps not ; but, provided it be not for me, you 
may be sure I shall not occupy myself with you ’ 

‘ You make a mistake when you think that I have 
nothing to do in your home ; but perhaps it is only 
with Noel Cresp that you concern yourself?’ 

‘ Whether I have a true love, or whether I die a 
maid, after dressing St. Catherine’s hair all my days, 
is no business of yours. 1 will not walk with you ; 


162 


NINETTE . 


and I do not wish to stay here to listen to your 
flatteries. Let me go home now/ 

4 Why will you not have me V 
4 That's a droll question P 

4 But if I asked you to be my wife ? I am rich, 
Ninette ; I could ruin you, but I could also make you 
very rich.’ 

4 As you will, it’s a matter of taste ; but no taste 
could lead me to give myself to you. I wouldn’t 
share your life, not if you promised me that I should 
die as young as my own poor mother who lies out 
yonder, and to whose soul God give peace.’ 

4 Once and for all, Ninette, why not V 
4 Do you ask me that seriously? Is it possible 
that you have to ask me that seriously V 

4 What do you mean ? What can you mean ? 
Answer me ;’ and he laid his hand heavily on her 
shoulder as he spoke. 

The girl slipped from under his grasp, shook down 
her dress, withdrew her arm from her water-jar, and, 
drawing herself up to her full height, looked her 
over-bold suitor in the face. 

4 T ou ask me why ? Then hear my reasons. Because 
you have so many bad things on your conscience.’ — 


THE RIVALS. 


163 


Sube gave a short, uneasy laugh. — 4 Because you live 
like a brute, and never say a prayer. Because you buy 
cheap, and sell dear; because you squeeze money from 
the poor, to spend it at carnivals. Because you are a 
cruel bully, and yet underhand, and cunning. Be- 
cause you go from cafe to cafe, from maison borgne to 
maison borgne , till it is a wonder that the police do 
not pick you up and take the care of you that you 
are not always fit to take of yourself. Because you 
ill-treat that miserable old Alary, and have made him 
as bad a man as yourself. Because you are a free- 
mason, and take a pleasure in insulting and injuring 
the priests. Because your hand is in every black 

job in the country. Because ’ and Ninette, who 

had run herself out of breath, paused for a moment. 

Sube, in spite of an effort to appear indifferent, was 
paler, and there was a dry sound in the voice with 
which he replied, 

‘ I must say that for a little girl you are wonder- 
fully well-informed ; but that is only a detail, and I 
ask you, once and for all, will you walk with me to- 
night V and he drew close to her as he spoke. 

Ninette heard his breath coming thick and 
fast. 


164 


NINETTE. 


4 Never 1 and if you lay a finger on me I will scream 
for help.’ 

4 Scream as much as you like,’ he answered, in- 
solently, and seized her by the elbow. 

4 St. Anne ! keep me in my wits !’ cried Ninette, 
before Sube could put his other hand over her mouth. 

4 Heaven have a care of thy bones !’ cried a voice 
just behind them, and at that moment a short, thick 
stick, after gyrating wildly round Sube’s head, 
descended with a resounding blow on his shoulders : 
and then followed a hail of blows. 4 Run, Ninette !’ 
cried Noel ; and the girl, nothing loth, fled upward to 
the gates, where Toussaint was standing, gesticulat- 
ing and laughing wildly. 

4 1 saw him there,’ cried the hunchback, 4 and I gave 
the stick to the captain,’ for so he persisted in calling 
Ninette’s admirer. 

Toussaint was still laughing and crying, 4 eh ! bi: 
eh ! liy and Ninette was still panting, when Noel 
rejoined them. 

4 The brute threatens vengeance,’ he said. 4 How- 
ever, he will have to go to bed for three days, and 
put himself on bread and water before he can set 
about it.* 


THE RIVALS. 


165 


4 Oh, I was so frightened lest he should knock you 
down ! He could of course have overmastered me, but 
he is also twice, or more than twice your weight/ 

4 But he had no stick, and Toussaint having put 
me up to it and armed me with this , I took him un- 
awares/ And then Noel began to execute a sort of 
war-dance, flourishing the stout cherry sapling, and 
exciting the hunchback to join in this triumph. 

4 Oh, I am too frightened to dance/ sobbed Ninette, 
when Noel seizing her by the wrist tried to make 
her join in their fandango. 4 1 am so frightened, and 
what do you think Sube will do next V 

4 He will hardly care to make his thrashing public, 
or to tell the police that when he came to steal a 
kiss he went home with aching ribs. When 1 came 
to see you to-night, Ninette, I came to tell you that 
I have settled with the Florys — Henri Flory goes into 
that cork-farm at Biot. We leave the regiment at 
the same time. His father is able to put him into 
this business, and I am to be his assistant. Henri 
Flory will manage the saw-mill and the accounts ; 
the stripping and packing will be my share of the 
work/ 

4 Are you pleased V 


166 


NINETTE. 


‘To be sure I am; that is to say, Ninette, if you 
are.’ 

Ninette, over-excited by the events of the evening, 
though not displeased to find herself at once the object 
of a jealous strife between two men and the confidant 
of Noel’s plans, began to cry. To dry her tears ought 
not to have been a very difficult task for him, and yet 
it was one which proved to require an hour, and it 
was only after many protestations of fidelity on Noel’s 
part that Ninette could be led to think that no fur- 
ther dangers threatened her from the attentions of the 
defeated broker. 

i I will come and tell you to-morrow what my father 
says — about Flory’s letter, and our lease. Shall I find 
you here to-morrow V 

6 Will you come at this hour V 
i Ye6, about this same hour/ 


CHAPTER XIII. 

A SMOOTH TALE. 

Under yonder beech-tree, standing on the greensward, 

Couched, with her arms behind her little head, 

Her knees folded up, her tresses on her bosom, 

Lies my young love, sleeping in the shade. 

Had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her, 

Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded slow, 

Waking on the instant she could but embrace me ; 

Ah ! would she hold me, and never let me go! 

Happy, happy time ! when the grey star twinkles 
Over all the fields, all fresh with blooming dew : 

When the cold-cheeked dawn grows ruddy up the twilight, 
When the gold sun wakes, and weds her in the blue — 

Then, when my darling tempts the early breezes, 

She, the only star that dies not with the dark, 

Powerless to speak all the ardour of my passion, 

I catch her little hand as we listen to the lark. 

Then come, merry April, with all thy birds and beauties, 

With thy crescent brows and thy flowery, showery glee: 

With thy budding leafage and fresh green pastures; 

And may thy lustrous crescent grow a honeymoon for me ! 
Come, merry month of the cuckoo and violet, 

Come, weeping loveliness, with all thy blue delight, 

Lo ! the nest is ready, let me not languish longer : 

Bring her to my arms on the first May night. 

G. Meredith. 

They were not fated to meet as it happened for 
several days, for old Cresp, the carpenter of Le Bar, 


168 


NINETTE. 


had gone to some distance for a sale of wood, and 
Noel had to wait before he could see his father, and 
obtain the paternal consent to his going into busi- 
ness with the brothers Flory. 

The elder Cresp, when asked to decide something, 
and to provide for his son’s settlement in business, 
seemed pleased to realise that the military service of 
Noel was over as regarded regimental life. He was 
pleased also that his son’s new venture should have 
to do with trees, and have a flavour of sawdust about 
it, though this cork sawdust, used for packing fruit, 
could not, he thought, be compared with the deli- 
cious fragrance of that which comes from fresh pine- 
logs, or even from a good oak plank. He accordingly 
agreed to settle something on Noel, for the old man 
possessed what is called a ‘bit of money/ and when 
one has an only son one must put one’s hand in one’s 
^pocket. It was done by the carpenter with a very 
good grace, and, though the season was autumn in- 
stead of spring, that season of All Hallows which 
seems rather regretful than hopeful, Noel sang to 
himself, 


* Lou premier jour de Mai I 
Quand tout se renouvelet : 


A SMOOTH TALE . 


169 


Rossignolet, rossignolet ! 

Quand tout se renouvelet, 

Au premier jour de Mai.* 

And his mother admired him beyond words. 

It only remained to tell Ninette. 

She had been ordered out of the house one evening, 
when she would fain have lingered for once, and was 
desired to go up the hill to pick the last strawberries. 
Her father, who had overheard Eugenie’s sharp words 
to his child, waited till the door had closed on Ninette, 
and then, standing on the threshold, he said to his wife, 
4 If Pierre Sube takes a walk with her to-night, as 
he wished to do last week, perhaps you will tell him 
where to look for her.’ 

Eugenie stared at him, and said, 

4 What romance is this V 

‘Nothing more certain/ replied the farmer, ‘you 
would not believe me when first I told you that Sube 
runs after your step-daughter, yet you have only to 
ask Toussaint. Last Friday, after giving me money to 
pay you off, Sube met Ninette at the well and he asked 
her to walk with him. I don’t know if he was the worse 
for liquor at the time or not, but Toussaint, seeing what 
happened, told Noel Cresp, and also lent him a stick 

with which Noel Cresp beat Sube black and blue. No 
12 


170 


NINETTE. 


one has seen the brute since; he got too good a 
drubbing, but Toussaint, as I told you, will show you 
the stick if you ask him and, without another word, 
the farmer left the house. 

Noel in the meantime had gone straight to old 
Petronilla in hopes of finding her grand-child beside 
her. Ninette, the blind woman said, had been sent 
up the Carrere road to get some strawberries, and 
Noel at once started off to overtake her. 

He ran up the side of the hill till he was almost out 
of breath, and till he was brought up by a festoon of 
smilax , which hung from tree to tree, and formed an 
inextricable tangle. Under his feet was the dry bed of 
a little stream full of round pebbles and of the rustling 
red leaves from the cherry-trees. He then turned to 
the right and continued to ascend till he reached a 
sort of grassy plateau, a spot where the nakedness of 
the rocks disappears and gives place to cushions 
of turf, from which spring wild mint, and cudweed, 
and juniper, and spikes of lavender. He pushed into 
this little open through the brushwood. Tim sun had 
sunk, and the shadows creeping along the sides of 
the hills would soon cover the valley. High in the 
air a magpie sailing off to its nest caught the sun- 


A SMOOTH TALE. 


171 


shine that still lit the tops of the crags, and they, 
all glowing and rosy, seemed to render back to the 
skies the light which they had imbibed during the 
day’s sunny hours. 

Noel was just going to call Ninette when he dis- 
covered her close to his feet. There, all her length 
on the turf, with one hand under her head, and with 
a basket of wood strawberries at her side, lay the 
sleeping girl. Noel stood for a moment gazing at 
her, with one hand shading his eyes and in the other 
twisting a branch of ivy heavy with its black berries. 

The little face with its closed lids was pale ; the 
sleeves of her cotton dress were frayed and faded, yet 
he felt his heart beat as it had only done when in 
Tonquin at the commencement of a battle. He was 
positively afraid to wake her; her, the child whom he 
remembered as climbing apple-trees, and riding the 
most undisciplined he-goat in the valley of the Loup, 
while she held on by its horns. How sound her sleep 
was now ! The air just lifted her little curls, and they 
gave a smiling childlike beauty to her head; the 
breath as it went and came was as sweet as new 
milk. The little waist and the young limbs were 
supple and slender like a mountain birch-tree ; 


172 


NINETTE. 


but Noel, as be knelt down on the turf just behind 
her shoulder, and looked at her long and tenderly, 
noticed a cruel scar across her left wrist. He drew a 
long breath. How was he to wake her? Should he 
lift her hand ? kiss her sweet half-opened mouth ? or 
touch her eye-lids with the branch he held ? Sudden- 
ly taking a strawberry from her basket, he put it 
inside her lips. Ninette opened her eyes with a 
little cry, and in a moment sat upright. 

4 Do you know how pretty you are V said Noel, 
taking her hands. The girl laughed, and made as if 
she would have risen to her feet, but Noel threw him- 
self on the grass beside her, and said again, as he 
slipped an arm round her waist, 4 Do you know how 
pretty you are V 

4 It is in your eyes,’ she replied. 

4 Well, I have no eyes except for you, Ninette ; and 
I came to tell you that, and also all the things that 
have happened to me since I saw you last, and since 

you took me for your gallant ’ 

4 You mean since you beat Pierre Sube,’ said Nin- 
ette laughing; 4 but the less we hear of him the 
better/ 

4 Neither seen nor heard of has he been, occupied no 


A SMOOTH TALE. 


173 


doubt in mending his bones, and in taking a tisane 
of arnica in bed, I should think. But it was not of 
him that I came to speak, it is of Henri Flory. I 
came to give you good news of our enterprise ; that 
is if you care to hear them V 

6 Quick ! quick I tell me all that is new, or good/ 

‘ Quick ! quick 1 Do you know that you talk like a 
quinsoun (chaffinch)/ 

‘Do IV and, as she rose laughing the bright colour 
spread over her face. ‘ Tell me quickly/ she said, 
‘ and as we go up higher we may yet find some more 
strawberries/ 

Noel took up the basket, and then tripping, laugh- 
ing and singing, they crossed the little grassy plateau 
arm-in-arm, and struck into the stony path which leads 
up to the sheep-folds. 

‘ Do you not know, have you never heard, you 
witless little girl, that, as people must eat, a man ought 
to have some sort of maintenance before he asks his 
love to marry him V 

‘ I should think so,’ said Ninette, laughing at this 
form of address. 

‘ A man must have a trade, as I said, or a fortune 
sufficient to fill his wife's mouth. You have heard 


174 c 


NINETTE. 


that?’ — Ninette nodded. — ‘Well, so had I, and so I 
set about making a purse, and even a nest, before I 
took a mate ’ 

‘ And pray when are you to take one., and who is 
to be Madame Noel Cresp V asked Ninette demurely, 

‘ You, pretty one; you, little one ; you, dear one ; you, 
my Ninette/ And Noel, putting his arms round her, 
lifted her deliberately off the ground, and kissed her 
three or four times on the lips. 

Ninette let him do it. Her eyes were full of tears, 
and yet through their mist she saw what a young 
strong, happy creature was her handsome bridegroom 
— her Noel who now took her hand, softly as if he was 
holding a little captive linnet, and said to her, 
quietly, 

‘You will be my wife and live with me, Ninette, 
till God parts us?’ 

Ninette bent her head, and replied, simply, 

‘ Yes, do with me what you will till God sends for 
us ; either together, or one by one/ 

Then the two young creatures, moved by the 
greatness of their responsibility and of their happi- 
ness, stood and stared silently in each other’s faces. 

The first love-tale was told in a garden, in that 


A SMOOTH TALE. 


• 175 


fateful one through which Pison ran to Havilah, 
‘ wherein was gold,’ and since then many a garden has 
heard the same simple story, the old, new tale of two 
naive hearts. Provence is the land of flowers, but a 
trim garden, that ‘box where sweets compacted lie,’ is 
only a toy for rich foreigners ; for the poor the garden 
lies everywhere ; and certainly for my poor Ninette, 
sometimes beaten, often an hungred, and generally 
bare-foot, a garden shaved and swept as we under- 
stand it, would not have been an appropriate frame. 
And so it came to pass, more suitably, that Ninette’s 
happiness was brought to her on the breezy hill-side, 
where the shepherds pass to the sheep-folds. It was 
high up above the level of the olive-trees, of the 
roses, sword-lilies, and the hyacinths ; up among the 
junipers, and the thorny broom, and the thyme ; 
on the edge of the forest, and on a level whence the 
eye plumbs the depths of the roads and of the water- 
courses far beneath, and where the light lingers long 
after the valleys are full of trailing vapours. 

As the lovers sat together there stretched away 
below them these far-reaching breadths of landscape; 
low, rolling hills over-smoked by the olive woods, and 
over which there now brooded a faint mist. Beyond 


176 • 


NINETTE. 


them was the expanse of the sea, cut by dark blue 
headlands, and rounded by a sky in which the moon 
had not yet risen. 

On a piece of rock under a dwarf oak-tree that 
still looked warm and brown with its close clinging 
russet leaves, sat Ninette; swinging one foot softly. 

The lovers sat long together, and over one of the 
girl’s hands, which rested on his knee, both the lover s 
hands were folded. They did not say much to each 
other : hard-worked simple folk do not express them- 
selves readily, but these two loved each other all the 
better for each little movement of the head and eyes 
that told so much, and Ninette’s gaze when Noel met 
it was full of thankfulness. 

No words could describe her gratitude for the 
affection which now acted as a balsam for the many 
cruel grievous wounds inflicted on her since her child- 
hood. Noel felt nerved by it, and by her beauty, to 
meet any of the conflicts which might await him in 
his attempted marriage with the daughter of a ruined 
farmer. 

That he would have trouble to meet was only too 
certain. In France matrimony is looked upon as a 
net, and he is the most praised among fishermen who 


A SMOOTH TALE . 


177 


contrives to laud that big fish, a rich bride. Now 
to Noel’s parents, unless they had minds differ- 
ently constituted from those of all self-respecting 
burghers in small provincial towns, his Ninette 
would appear as a very small minnow indeed. The 
poor girl might even be' rejected by them ; and yet 
he thought if they could but manage to marry, how 
proud he would be to show her to his sister Rose, 
and to Henri Flory. 

While he thought in this way he was silent. 
Ninette, after an equally long silence, said, 

‘Do you see Jehan and his bastoun (staff) up 
there?’ Orion was indeed visible through the fast- 
failing twilight. 

‘ Yes, 1 see him plainly enough, and Margarido too. 
It’s hard on him that in all this time he has never 
managed to catch her up ; never got close to her, like 
thisy drawing Ninette nearer to himself. 

‘ No, poor Jehan ! he doesn’t ; and so I thought Mar- 
garido would be an unlucky star to choose for mine. 
Besides, I am too small to have such a big one — so I 
have taken that quite, quite little, pinkish one just above 
her. I chose it when I drove home in the dark 
from Antibou, after seeing you and the regiment. 


178 


NINETTE. 


That is to be the star of my fate. You see that it 
is very bright to-night : is it not ? Uncle Ghiz says that 
I am quite wrong, and that one does not choose one’s 
star or one’s fate, because the stars are either well- 
placed or badly-placed for us at the hour when we are 
born. Do you believe it?’ ' 

‘ I don’t know. There must be something like a 
fate in people’s lives. One fellow gets killed in his 
first battle, and by a chance bullet too that has come 
out, as it were, to look for him ; while the man who 
stood next to him will perhaps go through four battles 
without losing so much as a button off his gaiters. 
There must be luck in that ; but I can’t say whether 
it’s owing to the stars or not/ 

‘ Aunt Nerta says- that it is wicked to consult the 
cards and the stars, and to buy, as it were, from them 
the hope and the courage which only religion can give/ 
‘ When people love they feel stout-hearted,’ said 
Noel. 6 And I will tell my father, now that we have 
settled with Flory, that there is something at Le 
ftouret’s also to be settled, because you and I have 
agreed to be man and wife/ 

After that decision they rose, and made their way 
down to the farm. 


A SMOOTH TALE. 


179 


‘ It looks as if it were late/ said Noel, ‘ it’s all quiet 
within.’ 

i No doubt, as Uncle Ghiz would say, it is time 
that all of us were gone to our straw ; so good-night, 
Noel.’ 

‘ Good-night, mienne ; and they kissed each other. 

Then, as the soldier turned away from the farm, 
and while his lips still seemed to feel the softness of 
Ninette’s girlish mouth, his eye caught the constella- 
tion to which from their place on the steep hillside 
Ninette had drawn his attention. There it was : there 
it had been ever since the world was made, hanging 
in the sky a warning to meaner mortals, the allegory 
of the untiring hunter of the firmament, who runs, but 
who never overtakes, who would fain reach, but who 
will never possess Margarido, the matchless maid. 
Would the fate of Jehan be his? The night was so 
still that he could hear the splash of the waterfall for 
sole response to his question in the rocks beyond 
Gourdon ; indeed, Noel was soon the only watcher in a 
district from which light after light had disappeared. 

It is only the very happy, or the very unhappy, 
who, finding the day too brief for their emotions, steal 
in this way, some hours from the night. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


ROUGH WORDS. 

‘ Le bonhcur n’arrive que d’un cot£, le malheur vient de partout/ 

Pensees de J. Roux. 

4 Lou bonhour, peccalre ! 

Ea un flour que dura gaire.* 

Proverb. 

Ninette had not expected to find that anyone inside 
the farm was doing this. She walked slowly into the 
kitchen with the manner of a person in a dream, and 
she put down her basket of strawberries on the ledge 
of the window, stooping and holding her face over 
it for a moment or two, to inhale the scent of the 
fruit which would now be for ever associated with 
Noel’s gesture in waking her out of her sleep. Several 
seconds had elapsed before her ear caught first the 
thick breathing of a stout person who is in a hurry, 
and then two heavy steps. Some one must surely 
be moving in the darkened room which she had just 
taken for granted to be empty: and then Ninette be- 
came aware of the presence of her step-mother. She 


ROUGH WORDS. 


181 


had barely time to reflect with thankfulness that that 
step-mother was to leave on the followiug day for 
Nice, when Eugenie, stepping forward out of the 
darkness with her arms akimbo, and with her face 
ominously pale, asked, 

i Where have you been?’ 

‘Up the hill,’ replied Ninette without flinching, 
though not without an inward sinking of the heart, as 
a storm was evidently coming. 

‘ Where?’ repeated Eugenie, in such a husky voice 
that Ninette concluded that the woman had been 
drinking. That happened sometimes in this house, 
where few, if any, of the sufferings incident upon ignor- 
ance, brutality, and the utter absence of that Chris- 
tianity which inculcates courtesy as well as honesty, 
were absent. Ninette, doubly afraid of La Rourette 
when she was drunk, instinctively looked round in 
hopes of finding her father either in the kitchen or in 
the graissier. 

‘ Where, I ask you, where have you been alone at 
night-fall V 

‘Gathering strawberries high up the hill, almost as 
high as the first sheep-fold.’ 

‘ Alone V 


182 


NINETTE. 


* No, I was in no clanger because I was not alone/ 

‘ Viper T cried Eugenie, darting forward, and deal- 
ing Ninette a blow which made the arm she had 
lifted to protect her face drop nerveless at her side. 

‘ Beggar’s spawn ! brat !’ cried the woman aiming 
another blow, but Ninette was able deftly to inter- 
pose her basket which the weight of the furious fist 
upset. 

The fruit rolled in all directions over the floor, but 
Ninette had time to duck down behind a chair. 

4 Do you dare to tell me that you have been out 
with a man alone at this hour, you shameless 
hussy?* 

‘As there is nothing to be ashamed of I am not 
ashamed ; on the contrary, I am as pleased as anyone 
can be. Let me go to my father, he will judge 
between us.* 

This suggestion added fuel to the fire of Eugenie’s 
wrath. Always accustomed to violence of temper, 
and knowing none of the constraint which generally 
prevents people from using brutal and violent lan- 
guage towards each other, La Rourette was now totally 
beside herself, and emitted a series of short, half- 
throttled screams. 


ROUGH WORDS . 


183 


‘Ah, you threaten me with your father I Coward, 
fool, driveler, as he is, what is he to me ? and who 
has told you to invite him to interfere between me 
and Pierre Sube V 

She seemed to be suffocating. 

Ninette, rising, leaned both her hands on the back 
of the chair which had been serving as her breast- 
work, and then said, 

‘Who is speaking of Pierre Sube, and where is 
he? I do not know, and what is more I do not care.’ 

‘You do not know? when you have allowed him 
to court you on the Carrere hill till long after dark.’ 

‘ Pierre Sube !’ and Ninette from terror now passed 
to a sort of amused indignation. ‘ Mafoi ! if I let my- 
self go with that man 1 should deserve to have all 
my bones broken. One must know how to respect 
oneself, and I give you leave to wash my head for 
me whenever you catch me exchanging words with 
that patron . Thank you ! not for all the money he 
has. Let me go.’ 

Eug6nie had sat down, but she was still panting 
with rage. 

‘Repeat what you have just said/ she gasped out 
at last. 


184 


NINETTE. 


6 It’s not worth repeating, but I have said it, and I 
will say it again ; that neither to-night, nor on any 
other night, have I walked with that patron ; and I can 
promise Monsieur le Cure that I will never give him 
the job of marrying me to such a scoundrel.’ 

By this time Ninette also was crying from over- 
excitement and from the recollection of the happiness 
out of which her step-mother’s violence had wakened 
her. What is more, she was exceedingly angry at 
having been struck. It was by no means the first 
time, as may be readily supposed ; indeed the demands 
made upon her patience and endurance had all along 
been many, and were only to be matched by the 
humility with which Ninette had hitherto accepted 
them, but this was the first time that it had happened 
to her since she was engaged to be married, and she now 
resented it for Noel’s sake even more than for her own. 
Noel's wife was not to lie still under contempt, nor 
was she to be treated as of less consequence than the 
clay floor into which Eugenie was crushing the straw- 
berries. So Ninette gave the chair a rather imperious 
shove, and would have passed her step-mother if she 
could. But Eugenie was beating on her heart, shriek- 
ing, and in short giving way to all the eccentricities 


ROUGH WORDS . 


185 


of an uneducated woman under an acute attack of 
hysterical ill-temper. 

As to Ninette, she did not utter another syllable. 
Her step-mother’s words, her attitudes and screams, 
her evident jealousy, her furious anger, and her 
present singular excitement, all told their own tale : 
a tale which sent a dark flush over the girl’s deli- 
cate neck and face. Her own development, her 
own love, and the sudden ripening of her faculties 
under the warmth of Noel’s affections, had all served 
to open her eyes to-night. For long the luckless 
woman before her continued to sob and gasp, and for 
long Ninette, leaning on the back of her chair, con- 
templated her step-mother in silent, contemptuous 
amazement. 

Eug&nie continued to scream, and to treat her step- 
daughter to an exhibition so humiliating that no one 
not immersed in the selfishness of an incessant 
struggle for existence, and already guilty of every- 
thing of which a woman ought to be most ashamed, 
would have exposed her to it. Finally, leaving this 
fit of passion to wear itself out, Hugues Firmin’s 
little daughter slowly left the house, sought out the 
dark cell where her grandmother lay, and threw her- 
self into the old woman’s arms. 

13 


186 


NINETTE . 


Petronilla had some difficulty in disentangling the 
girl’s sobbed-out utterances. But she learned at last 
that Ninette had just engaged herself to be married 
to Noel Cresp, and that within the space of the same 
short hour she had discovered, through Eugenie’s 
violent jealousy, how and why Sube had all along 
been the skeleton in her father’s house. All the 
bitterness and jangling, and all the rancorous words 
which used to pass between man and wife were now 
explained. The fact that the former intimacy be- 
tween the cousins Sube had not been harmless, nay, 
even the parentage of poor little Pepe himself had 
stood suddenly revealed to her, and many incidents of 
her girlhood, forming as it were a chain of damnatory 
evidence, passed before Ninette’s recollection. 

Sometimes she would ask her grandmother a direct 
question about her father, and then, when it had 
been answered, she would clench her hands, and cry, 
4 Peccaire! jpeccairiV and finally she burst out weeping, 
because she had nursed Pepe for six years, and had 
mourned for the sturdy little fellow as for her own 
flesh and blood. And he had not been her brother ! 

‘ Oh, what a horror ! what a horror !’ she cried. 
‘Does one do such things?’ 

‘Yes,’ said Petronilla, ‘such things happen only 


ROUGH WORDS. 


187 


too often, and they will continue to happen bo long 
as men and women, doing just what they like best, 
and acting as the devil prompts them, deny that 
there is any difference between right and wrong, and 
dare to laugh at both heaven and hell.’ 

Ninette was not prepared at that moment to 
generalize, even on such a serious topic. She sat 
for a long time immersed in thought. 

‘ He had pretty curls,' she said, between her tears, 

‘ and he was very nice when he did not strike me, 
or pull my hair, and martyrise the rabbits ; and, after 
all, he was only six when he died.’ At the recollec- 
tion of Pepe s death and sufferings she wept again, 
but at the recollection of Sube’s impudent overtures 
to herself she alternately flushed with anger, and 
paled with terror. ‘ Will God not punish him?’ she 
cried. ‘ Noel beat him, it is true ; but then he is so 
rich that he has many friends.’ 

Petronilla had difficulty in calming her. The 
emotions of that day, the sweet ones as well as the 
bitter ones, had ended by getting on the girl’s nerves, 
and daylight had come before Ninette had ceased to 
talk, to clench, or to stretch out her hands, and to sob. 

It was by an early train that Eugenie betook her- 
self to Nice, giving no one the benefit of her thoughts 


188 


NINETTE : 


on the events of last night, but shaking off her feet 
the dust of Le Rouret. We may leave her to enter 
upon the pleasures of bourgeois independence in Nice 
in a long coveted position. 

Toussaint, catching his dog by the forepaws, exe- 
cuted a farandoulo of delight after the ample dinner 
which Ninette took care that they should both have 
after Petronilla had been moved into the kitchen. 
Ninette and her father ought to have felt relieved by 
getting the house to themselves, but a weight lay on 
Ninette’s heart, and when she first met him after her 
step-mother’s departure she passed him with a 
drooping head. 

Had she known of the debt recently incurred to Sube 
she would have better understood Firmin’s depression 
on that evening, and the illness that followed. Next 
morning the farmer of Le Rouret had his mouth drawn 
to one side, complained of extraordinary weakness, and 
turned faint in the shed where the tubs of grapes 
stood. Anfos Ghiz, when summoned to prescribe, said 
that Firmin had had a slight paralytic shock, and only 
shook his head dubiously when the patient named as 
the cause of his symptoms the heady odours of this 
vintage’s wine. 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE CARPENTER’S SHOP. 

Quel bonheur, compagnons, apres tout de carnage, 

De retourner chez soi paisible et glorieux, 

De conter ses combats aux filles du \illage, 

En suivant la terreur du recit dans leur yeux ! 

Marguerite m’attend, et j’aime Marguerite. 

Aprfes nos garnisons aux amours passageres 
Au toit de nos parents clierckons d’autres amours. 

E. Augier. 

It was raining in Le Bar, and, as Noel walked on 
through its streets, the few lamps in the shops and 
the rarer street-lamps dangling from their iron gib- 
bets, threw spots of trembling light on the greasy 
pavement. He could not hope to find his father 
alone, or at leisure during work-hours, so he turned 
first into the cafe which now occupies the ground- 
floor of the old castle of Le Bar. When it was a 
guard-room, the lansquenets of Francis I. slept there 
on their plank beds. It has now got a billiard-table, 
above which a petroleum lamp burned, while an- 


190 


NINETTE. 


other was lit on a table at which men were playing 
cards. On the wall was a frame of billiard-marks, 
broken, and a picture of Garibaldi, torn, along with 
two oleographs of the most grotesquely irreverent 
subjects. They were of the sort which may be de- 
scribed succinctly as anti-clerical, and over them two 
men were cracking jokes, aloug with Francine, the 
stout and bare-armed mistress of the house. The 
hour was five o’clock, and the room was full, parti- 
cularly of card-players, who often resort to these 
cafes as early as half- past nine in the morning, and 
who always have some sympathisers to watch their 
games, and to make small bets on it. The lessons 
learnt in these cafes and guinguettes often lead to 
the gaol and the bagne, but the drinking-shops are 
allowed to multiply because the men who hold them 
represent votes for the Radical party. Boys of seven- 
teen, trained here by the shamelessness, the narrow- 
ness, the presumption, and the idleness of their elders, 
are already adepts in socialism, and to the increase 
of the liquor traffic as much as to the suppression of 
religious teaching must be attributed the deplorable 
increase of crime, madness, suicides, divorces, bank- 
ruptcies, and vagabondage in France. 


THE CARPENTER'S SHOP. 


191 


Noel sat down at a table where two lads, one of 
fourteen, and the other of ten, had their dominoes be- 
fore them, along with a small carafe of a fiery liquid, 
which had made their cheeks red and their tempers 
irritable. The younger struck his companion a blow 
on the wrist, and the elder returned it with an oath ; 
first the dominoes were upset and then the carafe ; 
and then Francine, coming up to them, remonstrated. 
Peace was restored at last, and Noel then asked for 
some beer, and sat for a little, partly watching the 
boys pby, and partly because he dared not anticipate 
the meeting with his father, listening to the gossip 
of his neighbours. That was of two sorts, the purely 
personal and the political kind. The first ran on, a 
perennial stream, fed from the fountain-head of per- 
sonal spite, and dwelt on such themes as the price 
given for a mule, and a fact which elicited bursts of 
laughter, viz., that la grosse Novine had walked in a 
recent procession with a white veil and a blue sash. 
Not knowing this grosse Norine ; Noel found the joke 
at her expense pointless, and next lent an ear to the 
political conversation. 

In provincial life principles are not recognised, and 
systems of government mean only men — persons who 


192 


NINETTE . 


can be praised or blamed, bullied or punished, accord- 
ing to the amount of indulgence that they may, or 
may not, have shown for local wants, or local vanity. 
Hence the fever of election seasons ; hence the many 
calculations made ; hence, also, the many causes of 
complaint that arise. Let it never be forgotten that 
France is not only a land of liberty, but also of 
equality, so that the one thing most ardently coveted 
in it, most contested, and most dearly bought, is the 
right or the means of domineering. To find a system 
where everybody shall command, but where no one 
shall be obliged to obey, is the problem which tacitly 
or openly occupies all the politicians of all the pot- 
houses in France. 

The one in Le Bar differed in no way from its 
neighbours. There was the same waste of health, 
time and money, as in any of the other four hundred 
thousand public-houses* of what used once to be 

* In 1685 there -were four hundred thousand public-houses in France, 
•without counting the thirty thousand drinking-shops of Paris. There 
are six hundred thousand distillers under the law of 1880, which gave 
free scope to the liquor traffic, and it is estimated that one milliard of 
francs (forty million pounds) in intoxicating liquors is spent annually 
by the working-classes. The privilege enjoyed by the distillers diverts 
annually from the treasury more than one hundred and fifty millions of 
francs. Since the laicsation of the hospitals in Paris, the consumption 
in them of brandy has risen from four thousand litres to sixteen thou- 
sand per annum ; rum is drunk to the amount of thirty-two thousand 


THE CARPENTERS SHOP. 


193 


considered a temperate country. There was the same 
obscenity, the same foul air, the same coffee-stains, 
the same tedium wearing the dress of amusement, and 
the same hatred by those that have not expressed for 
those that have. Only Noel differed from the crowd 
around him because no aspects of these people’s 
lives interested him, neither their gambling, nor their 
joylessness, nor yet the schemes of socialism which 
seemed to promise them vengeance if not happiness. 
He heard it all as in a dream, because he, for the 
time being, had placed his ideal of happiness neither 
in salaries nor in carriages, neither in horses nor in 
painted women, not even in national, local, or per- 
sonal vanity, nor yet in the chances of war, but only 
in the harvest of a girl’s beauty — in the delightful 
disquiet of her kiss. 

The clock on the wall struck six, and Noel went 
out to seek his father, and to learn from him his own 
and Ninette’s fate. 

litres (instead of five thousand), and the litres of -wine, formerly 
1,893,000, is now 2,648,000. The Journal Officid of 1885 — 6 reports 
that the number of suicides (double that of thirty years ago) comprises 
1,608 women and 398 minors. There were 3,542 more tramps and 
vagabonds than in 1884 — 5, and offences against morality have risen 
from 3,059 to 3,457. Thirty persons were condemned to death out of 
3,073 assize cases, and of these seven were executed in 1885 ; in 1886 
there were seventy sentences. 


194 


NINETTE. 


The door of the carpenter’s shop was open, and 
Noel could see the elder Cresp and his assistant 
steaming and bending a knotted plank of chestnut- 
wood. The chips which had been planed from it 
now blazed in a heap on the floor, spurting out red 
flashes into the surrounding darkness ; while against 
the lurid glow caused by this fire stood out the 
figures of Cresp the carpenter and of Cratarola, his 
workman. 

Noel waited for a moment to watch them, for dur- 
ing the years of his military service the daily life of 
the workshop had grown strange to him, and he 
assisted at this scene with an amused sense of novelty. 
It was picturesque enough as jar after jar of water 
was emptied on the heated, hissing plank. The arti- 
sans looked like spectres, and the elder of them, with 
his bald forehead, deep-set eyes, and long, homy 
fingers, would as he hung on to the top of the plank 
have made a study for a painter. Noel advanced a 
few steps, and wished the carpenter good-evening. 

* Come and hang on here,’ said Cresp, laconically. 

And, as he spoke, he made room for Noel’s hands 
beside his own. The young soldier obeyed mechan- 
ically, and by adding his weight succeeded at once 


THE CARPENTERS SHOP. 


195 


in giving the requisite bend to the plank. All the 
time that he eyed this empty coffin, stuck up against 
the wall and waiting for its lid, as well as the lugu- 
brious darkness, Noel was preoccupied ; so preoccu- 
pied that he felt no curiosity as to the came of the 
neighbour for whom this last bed was being prepared. 
At length, and when the carpenter was satisfied with 
the plank, he began to fit it with keys into the corre- 
sponding one ; and then, poising his hammer for a 
moment, he said to his son, in a meditative manner, 

‘ It’s all the same ; I’m sorry for the man, though 
I admit that I prefer the neighbours who will wish 
good-day to the poor as well as the rich, and that 
Lamacchia never did/ 

‘ Is it the dyer?’ 

‘ Yes, an ill-natured man ; it's true that, for the last 
few years his swollen legs did not go at a gallop, and 
perhaps that soured him. You remember him before 
his accident V 

No, Noel had but slight recollections of Lamac- 
chia, and could not recall him, either as he had been 
or as he now lay, waiting for his coffin to be sent 
home after dark. Noel was thinking only of the cork- 
woods, and of the long, white road across the plain 


196 


NINETTE. 


of the Brague to Biot, where his home was to be, with 
the diligence rolling along it, and Gazel, the driver, 
cracking his whip till the walls gave back the echo. 

Cresp drove the planks together with a couple of 
sharp ringing blows, and then, throwing down his 
tools, he said to his son, 

4 Well, have you seen your mother yet V 
4 No.’ 

4 Then come and eat a bit of supper with her now/ 
Cratarola and another workman carried off the coffin, 
and Noel saw them crossing the square with it as he 
turned into his mother’s door ; one man in Le Bar fit- 
ting into his last resting-place, and another preparing 
for life’s work and for his bridal-bed. 

Noel felt that a woman might be his best advocate 
to-night, the more so as Madame Cresp, nie Bensa, 
was known to be very partial to her son, and to 
prefer him to her sharp-tempered daughter Rose. In 
fact, they resembled each other. Cresp, the carpenter, 
had a bony, angular figure and flashing eyes, made 
all the more striking because his eyebrows and mous- 
tache had remained black while his forehead was 
bare and his hair white. The woman, on the con- 
trary, had nothing angular about her. She had 


THE CARPENTER'S SHOP. 


197 


Noel’s sweet eyes, and more emotional disposition. 
She had already cooked some supper, but at the 
sight of her son she began to fry some eggs, and 
meant to lay them on her dish of tripe. 

When was Noel to speak ? Before supper, and 
spoil the food with altercations, or after eating, when 
tempers might be supposed to be improved by a kind 
of gastric intoxication? Better to have it over at 
once, he said to himself ; so, before the dish was put 
on the table, and while the carpenter was filling him- 
self a tumbler of wine, Noel said, 

i Down there, where I am, I am as good as settled 
now with Flory, and, as I am settled, I should do 
better to get married. , 

Madame Cresp nearly dropped the frying-pan. 

6 How then ? Married ! Thou !’ she cried. 

Noel stood up, and, placing himself between his 
parents, he remained with his back to the fire as he 
repeated his phrase : 

‘ Since I am settled with Flory, I should do better 
also to get myself married/ 

The carpenter turned slowly round and looked at 
his son, but Noel, with the coolness of desperation, 
went on : 


198 


NINETTE . 


4 It seems so to me, and I hope it may seem so to 
you. It will all be very easy if you could see it in that 
light/ 

4 Everybody dies, that is sure — as sure as that I 
have tired myself out with making the coffin for 
Lamacchia ; but it is not so certain that everyone 
marries.’ This, Cresp said sententiously, but not 
angrily. He was rather amused than otherwise. 4 So 
you want to get married?’ he added, after a pause 
which neither mother nor son had the courage to 
fill. 

Noel answered, 4 Yes,’ and then sat down beside the 
table on which his mother had placed the supper. 
The moment of serving a dish is such a critical one 
that not even the idea of her son’s marriage had made 
Madame Cresp break silence again till she was sure 
of her eggs. But she was really very much excited. 
Women do not generalise, and Cresp the elder might 
talk of coffins and weddings in that abstract fashion, 
but for her the question resolved itself simply, and at 
once, into the name and station of her future daugh- 
ter-in-law. She already felt a little jealous of her, 
but as Noel was so handsome, and was sitting here 
safe and well and a credit to his house when hun- 


THE CARPENTERS SHOP. 


199 


dreds were dead in Tonquin, she had not the heart 
to say anything ill-natured about wives and sweet- 
hearts. She looked at her husband, hoping that he 
would soon show a proper curiosity and proceed at 
least to ask the name of the intended bride. 

Unluckily to Cresp, as to many a French father, 
the personality of a future daughter-in-law was but of 
little importance. The questions were, ought Noel 
to marry, and what ought he to require in a bride ? 
As to the first, Monsieur Cresp had positively a mo- 
ment's hesitation. The years of Noel’s service had 
passed so quickly, and his son had been so little with 
him, that he hardly recognised in him a grown-up 
man, and one who had seen foreign service. The 
elder man seemed only to see as in a vision the past 
years of his own hopes and pretensions, and of his 
own conquests under the flowering trees ; yet here 
was Noel positively asking to be married ! He looked 
fixedly at the young soldier, who returned the in- 
vestigation with a glance so firm, so manly, and so 
determined that it told its own tale, and told it with 
considerable effect. 

‘I daresay it is as you say. You have got settled, 
and perhaps the next thing is to get a wife. 1 had 


200 


NINETTE. 


not thought of it, or looked out for one for you. I 
lay a wager your mother has though.’ 

Madame Cresp was ready for this. 

‘If that is really an escoumisso ’ (wager), ‘you have 
lost it,’ she said, ‘ for I am not ready with a girl : 
though Heaven knows there are enough of them in 
the country; and of all colours ! However, there is 
no hurry/ 

4 There is a hurry for her ,’ replied Noel, again rising, 
and leaning on the back of the chair, as if to em- 
phasise his words. ‘ There is some hurry, for Ninette 
is so unfortunate.’ 

‘Unfortunate!’ thundered Cresp, ‘is that a reason 
for coming into this family? We are not unfortu- 
nate ; we can pay our way, and we have no wish to 
do anything else, or anything less/ 

Madame Cresp’s thoughts had leaped to another 
conclusion. She feared that Noel and some girl of 
the country had been playing at lou palet dou Viable , 
at the game that is as old as the world, and that the 
girl had lost. 

‘ Unfortunate !’ she cried, drawing back from the 
table. ‘ Oh, malheur ! and you are not ashamed to be 
the first to tell your mother that you propose to give 


THE CARPENTER'S SHOP. 


201 


her a graceless daughter ? In this country, young 
women have learned everything they should not 
know, and have forgotten how to blush.’ 

Noel laid his hand on his mother’s arm. 

4 Peace 1’ he said, and his eyes shot fire, ‘peace! 
As you are my mother I forgive you the thought 
about her ; though as my mother you should not have 
misjudged me so. Ninette is as good as the pain 
lenity but she is poor, her mother is dead, her matagot 
(wild cat) of a step-mother ill-treats her, and a bad 
man is trying to buy her from her father who is 
almost a bankrupt. That is why I say there is a 
reason for being in a hurry ; that is why I say that 
she is unfortunate ; for they have made her marrido 
(sad), when she ought to be as gay as the couquihado 
(lark) ; she is so sweet-tempered.’ 

4 Of course she is perfect ; the girl who takes one s 
fancy always is,’ said his father. 

Madame Cresp began to dry her eyes with her 
apron. This Ninette was a nuisance, but how hand- 
some Noel looked when his eyes grew so dark, and 
his voice so clear and strong. 

His father kept eyeing him with as much curiosity 

as sympathy. How the lad had grown up, and how 
14 


20 2 


NINETTE. 


well he seemed to know his own mind, and how he 
was altered when he spoke in earnest ! 

‘You do not eat/ said Madame Cresp to her son. 

Noel pushed away the plate with the victuals on 
it. The mother groaned, but the father laughed. 

‘ Ah !’ he said, ‘ it has always been known to be a 
complaint on which one does not grow fat ; but who 
is she V 

‘Ninette, the daughter of Hugues Firmin of Le 
Rouret/ 

‘ Little Ninette ! that mite of a child who used to 
run about the church and the presbyt&re when her Aunt 
Nerta was housekeeper to the Abbe Audibert. She 
has still got a doll, I’ll warrant her/ said Madame 
Cresp. 

‘ Not a bit of her/ said Noel, smiling for the first time 
since the discussion began ; ‘ she is now seventeen, and 
not only nurses her old Maigrana like a Soeur would 
do, but does more than half the work of the farm. 
She is not very big/ he added after a pause, and he 
smiled again as he recalled the child-like proportions 
of his young love. 

4 What fortune has she V 

4 Five francs upstairs in an old needle-case of her 


THE CARPENTER'S SHOP . 


203 


mother s, and her clever ten fingers ; but we were 
children together, we were glad to meet again, and I 

love her, and that is all ’ 

‘A pretty fortune! I will tell the cunning minx 
what I think of her, to have caught my son/ said the 
carpenter’s wife. 

‘ She might be rich ; she might marry Pierre 
Sube. He is mad about her, and follows her; at 
least he did. This week he won’t leave his bed, 
however ; for I beat him black and blue/ 

Madame Cresp’s eyes brightened. 

Here was a genuine piece of gossip, an adventure in 
Le Bar, and that the hero of it should be her son was 
so delightful that she forgave Ninette for being its 
heroine. 

‘Beat him!’ 

‘To be sure! I found the brute trying to kiss 
Ninette. What else could I do? What else would 
you have me to do ? I am a soldier, after all/ 

Old Cresp chuckled. 

‘ So the penniless chit gets herself fought for. She 
is not a simpleton I perceive/ 

‘ That Sube is the worst man in a bad world/ said 
his wife ; ‘ and bad company for man, or for maid, 


204 


NINETTE. 


for the purse, or for the conscience. How angry he 
must be ! Do not tell the neighbours, Noel, that you 
thrashed him/ she added ; 4 for he will be a most dan- 
gerous enemy/ 

4 1 am not afraid ; that is, I am not afraid for myself, 
but that miserable father of hers has borrowed money 
from Sube, and dares not now call his soul his own, be- 
tween his wife and his creditors ; and Ninette must 
really be rescued from that gang of malefactors/ 

4 1 don’t owe Sube one red farthing/ cried the 
carpenter, throwing his rule down on the table in 
an attitude of defiance ; 4 and I am, perhaps, the only 
man in Le Bar over whom he has not established 
some tie or another. He is a real gringot .’ 

4 Well, I owe him less than nothing/ laughed Noel, 
throwing back his head, 4 and he owes me a good 
licking.’ 

4 Take care ; take care : do not tell anyone of it/ 
reiterated Madame Cresp, who, none the less, went to 
mass early next day, and, quite oblivious of her own 
warnings, imparted to a dozen indiscreet friends the 
tale of Sube’s love-adventure at Le Rouret, and of 
her son’s prowess. Everyone rejoiced, and some won- 
dered. People always do when they discover that 


THE CARPENTER'S SHOP . 


205 


love has charms even for such a rugged breast as 
Sube’s, and that money sometimes fails to conquer, 
even in such a simple breast as that of little Ninette's. 
To all her friends Madame Cresp repeated, ‘ N oel fought 
like a knight,’ and the old carpenter nodded his head, 
and said, as he took snuff, ‘Noel fought like a little 
devil;’ and he chuckled over this so much, and so often, 
that he ended by saying, ‘ I believe that we shall have 
to marry them, or that hunks will get the girl, after all.’ 
The first time he said so to his son, the soldier red- 
dened. Ninette prove faithless indeed ! No fear of 
that ! They would rather make the three respectful 
summons, and marry without leave. But he was too 
shrewd to say this out loud. He humoured the old 
man, and, looking the other way, he said, in a tone of 
affected despair, 

‘ To be sure, to be sure ! And you would not like 
to see him take her from me V 

In this way, and contrary to all expectations, did 
old Monsieur and Madame Cresp find their vanity 
interested in furthering their son’s marriage with the 
very poorest bride in the commune of Bar-sur-Loup ; 
and in this way did Noel and Ninette occupy for a 
few days all the stages of the fool’s paradise. 


CHAPTER XYI. 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW. 

’Twill rain hot vengeance on offenders. 

Richard II. Act i., 2. 

The crime of sense became 
The crime of malice, and is equal blame. 

Tennyson. 

Pierre Sure had indeed, as Noel expected, kept the 
house ever since his beating, finding a temporary 
solace in venting his ill-humour on his servant Alary, 
while he planned a campaign of revenge. If he 
could carry out his comprehensive scheme, the effects 
of his vengeance would be felt by all of those who 
were concerned in thwarting him; even by Tous- 
saint, whom he would reach through his fellow-dog 
Biondino. On the farmer in the first place he would 
serve, without loss of time, a writ and bill of sale, 
distraining him for that debt of two thousand francs 
so recently contracted on Eugenie’s account. The 
facts of Le Rouret’s bankruptcy and its publicity, 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW. 


207 


would at once indispose the Cresps to permit their 
son’s engagement to Ninette, and if they ventured 
to favour his suit the broker promised himself to 
ruin effectually the career of their son-in-law Nicolas 
F ayet. 

Long an usher in a school in Nice, he knew that 
Fayet had wished for and had even applied for the 
place of schoolmaster at Courmes. If he should dare 
to cross Sube’s path, or rather to assist his wife’s 
family in doing so, Fayet would soon find himself 
without a place, and so unfavourably viewed by the 
authorities that as far as his future was concerned he 
might as well take to breaking road-metal at once. As 
for Noel, he must be visited with a twofold destruc- 
tion. Vengeance should overtake him without delay 
in his new cork business at St. Julien-de-Biot, and that 
to an extent v r hich might possibly lead to a rupture 
between him and his partners, the brothers Flory. 
But a fire in the forest of lessees, who under their 
lease have to pay a franc a tree, would not be a 
sufficient punishment. The broker often rehearsed 
through his clenched teeth Noel’s cry, 4 Heaven have 
a care for thy bones !’ and ho fancied himself yelling 
the phrase into the young soldier’s ears, under circum- 


208 


NINETTE. 


stances at once more painful, more dangerous, and 
more defaming than had been his own beating beside 
that magic spring of Couliafiou. Do what he would by 
day and by night, he could not get that scene out 
of his memory. The girl’s beauty, as he had come 
upon her, with her bare feet and arms, still stirred 
and maddened his blood; while even his coarse 
nature felt goaded by her biting words nearly as 
much as by Noel’s shower of blows, or by the de- 
risive laughter of the hunchback who had been a 
witness to his defeat and to Noel’s triumph. 

‘ He who laughs on Friday may yet happen to have 
to weep on Sunday,’ he said to himself, 4 and they 
shall all pay for this.* And, as the first step towards 
realizing his wishes, he dispatched Alary before the 
dawn to summon the attendance of Jean-Bap tiste 
Fayet, the notary of La Colie, and uncle to Nicolas 
Fayet, the schoolmaster who had married Rose Cresp. 

I have said that Pierre Sube did not often invoke 
the aid of gentlemen learned in the law, his transac- 
tions being, for the most part, of a kind that would 
not bear to be explained, and needed not to be con- 
firmed in the mouth of two witnesses. In the present 
emergency he had, however, employed J. B. Fayet 


A BLOW FOB A BLOW. 


209 


as one of the two notaries required for serving the first 
commandement , or writ, and for drawing up the bill 
of sale at Le Rouret. 

But this Fayet, besides his patente as a notary, pos- 
sessed another qualification, which recommended him 
to-day as a tool. Through him Sube could send an 
emphatic warning to Rose and to her husband, Nicolas 
Fayet, to tell them that, if they did not choose to 
be unstitched, and hung up high and dry out of the 
way of all future promotion, they must prevent Noel's 
marriage with Ninette Finnin. 

It was Sunday morning, and the bells in Le Bar 
were chiming overhead with that clanging, rattling, 
noisy peal so dear to Proven $al ears. But li set gau 
(the seven joys) woke no answering echo in the 
broker's heart, only as the clock struck nine Sube 
embraced the resolution to leave his bed, and to 
present himself to the notary Fayet as sound in wind 
and limb. Fayet might have to see some of the 
Cresp party in the course of the week, and it would 
never do for Noel to hear directly of his rival as being 
still invalided after that thrashing. 

The broker's house was the gable or end one of 
three tenements grouped together under the old 


210 


NINETTE . 


castle of Le Bar — I say under , because so steep is 
the slope of the hill which this castle crowns, and so 
vast and massive are its ramparts, that the roof and 
the chimneys of these time-worn, shabby, unplastered 
houses do not even reach as high as the herse formed 
by the ramparts from which the castle itself rises. 
The fortress has round flanking towers placed at 
intervals, and of these towers all have been razed 
with the exception of the one at the south-eastern 
corner, which though roofless still rears itself in all its 
height, and with its heavy crenelated and embrasured 
front overhangs, and indeed seems to threaten as it 
dominates, all the lower part of the town. 

At the back of the castle, between it and the parish 
church, lies the open square called the Place du Cha- 
teau, and from this, leaving the parish church to its 
left, there descends a narrow, tortuous street, roughly 
paved with cobble stones. To the right of this street 
is the row of three houses possessed by Sube, his own 
house, as the first of them, abutting on the street 
and having a door opening into it, though a nar- 
rower vennel opens beneath it to the right, just 
before the street itself turns at a sharp angle, and 
then dips away, Moorish fashion, under the arches 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW. 


211 


that span this the main artery of the southern side of 
Le Bar. 

Sube’s own house was pushed so close up to the 
foundations of the castle that on its upper side it had 
neither doors nor windows ; but behind it, squeezed 
in as it were between it and the buttress-like founda- 
tions, there was a little terraced garden full of lemon- 
trees, where figs grew early ripe against the southern 
wall. 

This property belonged to the Subes, and it had 
done so since the Revolution. 

Pierre’s grandfather originally kept a marine-store 
shop on the little quay at Cannes, at the epoch when 
the young Massena was courting Mademoiselle Lamar, 
the apothecary’s daughter there, when Madame Letitia 
Buonaparte was washing the family linen at Antibes, 
and whenher son Napoleon (with his sallowface and his 
flat hair) walked about these roads, and paid visits to 
Augustin Robespierre up at St. Cesaire. The store- 
dealer, being industrious and cautious, grew rich 
even in those unsettled times, and he ended by 
buying some land and houses at Le Bar, which had 
been once the property of his betters but which came 
to be sold very cheap. He married late in life, without 


212 


NINETTE . 


going to church, and, after persecuting Christianity in 
the person of its ministers, he died, leaving three sons. 
They had never been baptised, but the code having 
come in time to oblige their parents to consider mar- 
riage as part of the law of the land, they were born 
in wedlock; Camille, the eldest, fell in the first 
Algerian campaign ; the youngest, named Numa, long 
a coastguardsman near Antibes, left one daughter, 
Eugenie ; while Marius, the second of his children, 
became the father of Pierre Sube, the broker of Le 
Bar. 

The cousins, Pierre and Eugenie, must have pos- 
sessed joint shares in this house-property, but the 
neighbours though aware of this, and laudably curi- 
ous as to the affairs of persons ever in their sight, 
were never able to ascertain precisely what divi- 
sion they agreed upon between themselves. The 
only things known for certain were that Eugenie, 
after many adventures, and after losing at Monte 
Carlo the fortune she had made by no creditable 
means at Nice, had tried to compass a marriage with 
Pierre : and that her disappointment had led to that 
union with Firmin which turned out so lamentably. 

Sube inhabited two rooms on the first floor of his 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW . 


213 


house, having cut open a communication between 
the two so as to be able when in bed to keep 
an eye upon his bureau . Wonderful tales were 
told about its contents in a little town where it 
could not be denied that this usurer terrorized the 
bodies and souls of his impecunious victims. He 
certainly took bribes to conceal many a peccadillo, 
and since the Ferry laws he was credited with getting 
hush-money whenever he threatened those parents 
who sent their children to schools taught by the 
religious orders. 

There were strong inside wooden shutters to his 
room, a narrow strip of very dirty carpet near the 
bed, torn bed-curtains, and a small weighing-machine, 
probably once yellow, as it was made of brass, but 
now green and black, from dirt and neglect. Above 
these dwelling-rooms was the apartment occupied by 
Alary. There might be noticed a kitchen under the 
tiles, where a frying-pan hung between two strings of 
onions, for Alary was cook as well as porter. His bed, 
however, was in the corner of an attic bed-room, near 
a trap-door in the floor which communicated with the 
counting-house of the broker. 

On this morning Sube was seated near the fire, 


NINETTE. 


<214 

with a shawl over his feet, but hearing steps on the 
staircase he rose, put aside the shawl, and drew over 
the unsightly stains on his forehead, a cap which had 
a shabby binding of fur. He did not wait for the 
visitor to ring, but, opening the door in person, he 
admitted Monsieur J. B. Fayet for whom he had been 
waiting. 

‘Monsieur Fayet, give yourself the trouble to be 
seated/ he said. ‘ You arrive in good time/ 

‘Ha! does the mass still count/ said the notary, 
laughing, ‘ I am glad of it ; though I don’t suppose 
that any of them will particularly care to be present 
at reading of this gospel / and as he spoke he took 
from his pocket a copy of the bill of sale. The 
broker ran his eye over it with a kind of chuckling 
noise. 

‘ No, this will hardly be good tidings at Le Rouret/ 
he added, as if it gave him pleasure to carry on both 
the profane jest and the allusions. ‘ Have you seen 
Firmin since it was presented?’ 

‘ No, the bailiffs did that, but I daresay there is 
great lamentation/ 

‘ But you delivered the notification at the Credit 
Fonder/ said Sube. 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW. 


215 


4 That was done by me in person within the hour, 
and the bank may be trusted to appear for its 
interests/ 

4 Which are of course greater than mine. I am, in 
fact, the last creditor/ 

4 But you had the debt registered in Grasse, other- 
wise you ran a chance of being that last one whom 
the devil takes,’ said Fayet. 

4 Ta-ra-la-ra ! laridon, don!’ hummed the broker, 
4 that is as may be. Of course, I hope to get the 
money back, for two thousard francs is two thousand 
francs, and the interest is the interest. Some folks 
say that I sell my money too dear, but I don’t see 
why money, like cassia-flowers or serge, should not 
command as good a price as it will fetch. Nothing is 
to be sold cheap that can be sold dear, that is my 
rule with my money, and the price given for it con- 
cerns the person who buys it, though in this case 
the Firmins of three generations will in the end have 
paid a mighty long price for it.’ 

The notary took snuff, and while he filled his 
nostrils Sube went on, ‘The main points are this 
man’s bankruptcy and its publicity. Did you get 
the posters printed, as I told you V 


216 


MNETTE. 


‘Certainly/ replied Fayet; ‘here is a specimen / 
and he drew from his pocket a huge, yellow poster, set- 
ting forth in black letters the foll< >wing announcement : 

‘ Tribunal de Commerce de Grasse. 

‘Avis. Bankruptcy of Finnin, Hugues, farmer at 
Le Rouret. Judge Commissary, Monsieur C. Blanc; 
Provisionary Syndic, Monsieur Ampero. By order 
of the Judge Commissary for the bankruptcy of Fir- 
min, Hugues, farmer, the presumed creditors in the 
said bankruptcy are convoked ’ 

‘Excellent! excellent!’ said Sube. ‘Now let us 
see the poster for the sale ;’ and he turned to a red 
broadsheet on which was printed in black letters : 

‘ Sale after Bankruptcy. 

‘On Saturday, 22nd of October, 1886, at nine 
o’clock in the morning, and on the following day, 
there will be sold by means of the undersigned, and 
at the instance of Monsieur Ampero, syndic of the 
bankruptcy, a sale of all the objects of furniture, 
furnishing, the farm known as Le Rouret, with its 
bastidounj etc., etc., etc.’ 

‘ “ Every blow is good that is dealt at an evil 
beast,” says the proverb ; but these blows are more 
than good: they are excellent,’ said Sube. 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW. 


217 


4 These will be posted to-morrow morning through- 
out the canton.’ 

4 Paste one during the night on the door of the 
carpenter’s shop, and another on the opposite wall/ 
said Sube, 4 and, bagasse ! that, I think, will break off 
Monsieur Noel’s marriage, or nothing will/ 

4 It ought to,’ said the notary, taking another pinch 
of snuff, and wondering all the time whether Sube 
meant to offer him any breakfast or not. 

4 Troun * de Diou ! it shall,’ said the broker, striking 
the table with his fist ; 4 but you must also do your 
best in this matter, for it is by no means sure that, 
because Fir min is sold up, this girl may not have a 
dot from old Anfos Ghiz and his sister/ 

4 What then V said the notary. 

4 It was your nephew, was it not, who applied for 
the vacancy in the school at Courmes? Everyone 
does not get promotion who applies for it, nor, it 
seems, is your nephew Nicolas yet a freemason. A 
hundred and three applicants, seven vacancies in the 
department ; calculate their chances at this moment.’ 

4 Yes, yes, it is a curie , it always is ; but folk must 
live, or try to.’ 


15 


* Troun , thunder. 


218 


NINETTE. 


‘In order to live well, one must play one’s game 
well/ 

‘ Follow suit when you play hearts, I suppose/ 

‘ Just so — hearts are trumps — and you may make 
your nephew Nicolas understand that if he does 
not follow suit, or if I catch him finessing, he 
may as well break road-metal for his living all the 
rest of his days. If I am satisfied with him, all the 
freemasonry of the coast will back me up. You 
know that it will, for it is not six weeks since our 
juge <1 instruction, thanks to my influence, was made 
garde des sceanx. I can as easily prevent Nicolas 
getting a school as Ampero was made sure of his 
decoration once he employed me to get him that red 
ribbon/ 

‘ If all tales are true it cost Ampero comparatively 
little, and Madame Ampero all that she was worth/ 

Sube laughed uneasily. 

‘It is as I had the honour of telling you a little 
while ago about my money : everything has its price. 
A note for a thousand francs, or a woman, or a decora- 
tion, or, as in this case, a school. The school in ques- 
tion has been of the good old-fashioned sort. The man, 
who but for his organ-playing fancies and his clerical- 


A BLOW FOR A BLOW. 


219 


ism might have lived and died there, was nearly 
twenty years in the place. He was secretary to the 
mairie , surveyor for all the neighbouring fields, and 
arbitrator between all the peasants who do not always 
care to go before th ejuge de paix , and agent also for the 
Yicomte de Malvans, and he only taught pot-hooks and 
the rule of three when he had a mind to do so. It’s a 
pretty country, too, so if your nephew Nicolas and 
his wife have any mind to go there let them oppose 
Noel Cresp’s marriage, and listen to no bargaining.’ 

‘ In the face of these posters the pere Cresp is not 
likely to require their advice.’ 

‘Very likely ; but it’s as well to stop every loop-hole, 
and you had better give your time to-morrow to 
open the eyes of your nephew and niece to their own 
interests. You know that where I lay my hand it 
leaves a mark.’ 

After a few more details of business had been gone 
into which had no connection with the Cresp-Firmin 
marriage, this pair of friends, so well suited to under- 
stand each other, separated. 

Sube did not offer breakfast to the notary, and 
Fayet, who hated him for this, did not fail to tell 
everyone whom he met and whom it might or might 


220 


NINETTE. 


not concern, that Pierre Sube, that famous fox and 
croqueur de poules , had just been beaten black and 
blue by a country gallant, whose promise he had 
been caught kissing; and that after such a sound 
thrashing he was still unable to lift either foot or 
fist. 


CHAPTER XVIL 


FORBIDDEN. 


A mistress, moderately fair 
And good as guardian angels are, 

Only beloved, and loving me. 

Cowlet. 

But God be thanked for prevention. 

Henry V. f II., 2. 


When Noel had first propounded his marriage to his 
parents they had not positively forbidden him to 
think of Ninette, and the carpenter had only said a 
something which was equivalent to 6 le roy s’avisera . 9 
That meant that he would find out the real value of Le 
Rouret, for Ninette was after all an only child, and 
she might, as such, not be such a hopelessly bad 
bargain, as Noel in his candour and his pity had 
represented. 

Young people, the carpenter said to himself, are 
always so hasty. They go from one extreme to an- 
other; from hope to despair, from boundless wealth 
to bottomless ruin. It is only the old who can boast 


222 


NINETTE. 


of having both weights and measures ; for they 
possess the experience of ripe years, are not as 
sanguine as the juveniles are, nor yet do they 
bungle like the dotards who have a childhood only 
without its energy or its illusions. All this Joseph 
Cresp said to himself, and, as a proof of possessing 
the middle-aged wisdom which he prized so highly, 
he kept his mouth shut and his ears open, a thing 
which peasants are so apt to do, that one must possess 
a cunning equivalent to their own in order to dis- 
cover their meaning, because their words are few, 
and their intentions are generally the very last things 
that are to be gathered from their words. 

His wife who did not appreciate his reserve did her 
best to tempt him to break it, talking and contra- 
dicting herself all day long ; but the carpenter pur- 
sued in silence his investigations into the health, wealth, 
and liabilities of the Firmin family. 

Madame Cresp at last grew impatient, and deter- 
mined to provoke an explanation, or at least an 
expression of opinion, 

4 What,’ she asked, 4 may be the good of sounding 
the deep sea, or of measuring the windings of the Loup 
before giving Noel an answer! I always say have 


FORBIDDEN. 


223 


a mind of your own and make it up. I used to think 
that little Ninette very nice.’ 

i Silence, wife, I beg of you. One does not work 
and spend all the sweat in one’s body to marry one’s 
only son foolishly, to place one’s money badly, or to die 
on straw. Till the last sacraments are brought into 
this house I mean to be master in it.’ 

This altercation took place on Sunday, but the 
patient investigator was fated to have his task short- 
ened ; for on Monday morning, when he went out 
into the street to take down the shutter of the 
carpenters shop, he found that shutter adorned with 
a coloured poster, two feet in length, setting forth 
a sale of bankrupt effects, which were no less 
than the i meubles and immeubles of Firmin, Iiugues, 
farmer, at Le Rouret.’ The sale, as advertised, 
would take place the following Saturday. Had the 
facts announced on the red bill required confirmation, 
they received it from a copy of the same on yellow 
paper plastered on the opposite wall. 

The carpenter stared at it for some time, but, true 
to his rule of silence, he did not till he had given 
some hours of reflection to the matter allude to the 
subject which naturally engrossed all his thoughts. 


224 


NINETTE. 


‘ Lucky for me,’ he said, ‘ that I did not give our 
son an answer in haste. I said to myself, we must 
know more of this girl, and of her father.’ 

‘Don’t speak to me of him,’ cried the mother. ‘ It 
would be better to have no father at all than such a 
shiftless creature as that Firmin has been all along. 
This is a real Friday tree, this whim of Noel's.’ 

‘ You women you arrange all these things much too 
fast. I have waited and made my observations ; but, 
a writ having been served on Firmin, the matter is 
now at an end.’ 

‘Poor Ninette !’ said Madame Cresp, reflecting with 
just maternal pride that to have lost a sweetheart 
as handsome as her son must be indeed a heavy blow. 
‘ Perhaps Ninette will change her mind and will many 
a man who can afford to take her. She must know 
the taste of poverty, having tasted but little else in 
her life-time.’ 

After two days the Cresps received a visit from 
their son-in-law Nicolas Fayet, a slightly-built, nerv- 
ous young man, with a peaked goat’s beard, and a 
bilious complexion. He was a disciple of Comte, and 
had begun life as an usher in a school in Nice. 

‘He had heard,’ he said, ‘of Firmin’s bankruptcy, 


FORBIDDEN. 


225 


and, as his own prospects of advancement seemed 
rather uncertain, he must out of a due regard for 
his wife’s interests represent the impropriety of Noel’s 
marrying the bankrupt’s daughter/ 

Cresp, who did not care for the dictation of his 
son-in-law any more than for the suggestions of his 
wife, only growled out something between his teeth 
to the effect that the brother and sister Ghiz, who 
were Ninette’s relations on the mother’s side, might 
yet be disposed to make an heiress of the girl. 

4 The thing may have good in it yet,’ said Madame 
Cresp, who rather enjoyed contradicting her pedan- 
tic son-in-law. 

The schoolmaster, who wished to rise, who loved 
his profession, and who longed to turn it into a 
propaganda for Bert’s Catechism and for his own 
advanced positivism, grew green as he listened to the 
old couple. Passionately as he desired advancement 
and a sphere for airing his ideas, he felt that there 
were far larger issues and interests at stake than the 
mere patrimony to be divided between his wife and 
her brother, even were that to be largely damaged 
by Noel’s imprudence and by an improvident mar- 
riage on his part. 


226 


MNETTE. 


* I think/ he said, * you will both regret it, and I 
know that we shall ; in fact, I should feel bound to 
take proceedings with a view to Rose’s interests.’ 

The carpenter scratched his head, and Madame 
Cresp looked at him rather defiantly when, after a 
pause, Fayet said to her, 

‘ If Noel marries Ninette, their children will be called 
Famine and Hospital.’ 

‘ Those may not have pretty names, but it might be 
better to have children who were called by them than 
to have none at all, like Rose/ replied his mother-in- 
law, tartly; and Nicolas Fayet, reformer and philo- 
sopher as he was, had to retire discomfited from this 
eocounter with the carpenter’s wife. 

The one which awaited poor Noel about an hour 
later could not be so briefly disposed of. 

‘Look here/ said the carpenter, handing to his 
son a piece of stamped paper ; and Noel, instinctively 
disliking the sight of stamped paper, frowned at the 
sight of it. 

i What is this V he said. 

i Vedase ! your eyes are younger than mine, and I 
should have thought you did not require me to spell 
it over to you.’ And, taking it from his son’s hand, 


FORBIDDEN. 


227 


he commenced: ‘“Year 1886. In the month of 
October.” Hum I hum I “ In virtue of the act of 
obligation,” hum ! hum ! “ by Monsieur Jean Baptiste 
Fayet, notary at La Colie,” ’ (Noel turned and looked 
at his mother), ‘“and of Monsieur Ampero, notary in 
Le Bar, signified at the head of the writ, which shall 
be mentioned hereafter hum ! hum ! “ at the request 
of Monsieur Pierre Sube,” 9 (‘ Troun de I)iou V said 
Noel, starting up, and flushing scarlet,) ‘ “ proprietor, 
and domiciliated in Le Bar, will proceed to the present 
seizure of the real estate,” hum! hum ! “ for an obliga- 
tion eligible with interest incurred by Hugues Firmin, 
proprietor, and domiciliated at Le Rouret. First, for 
a sum of two thousand francs ; second, for interest on 
the same. The property, -with a valuation of sixteen 
thousand francs, is situated in the canton of St. 
Nicolas, and is bounded on the south by the high- 
road ” I think,’ said the carpenter, throwing 

down the sheet of paper, which was certainly genuine, 
as Noel saw how it was stamped and bore the visa of 
the mayor ; ‘ I think that is decisive, and, if it were 
not, the next ought to be.’ 

The other document was a bill of sale expressing 


228 


NINETTE. 


tlie forced eviction of Ninette’s family from the farm 
of Le Rouret. 

‘ Blow for blow,’ said the young soldier to himself, 
as he recalled Sube’s muttered threats the day of his 
thrashing. 

He took the notices in his hand, and read them over 
again, his eyes flashing when he came to the name of 
Fayet, that notary of indifferent reputation who was 
Rose’s uncle by marriage, and who, as such, would 
probably raise up fresh complications and fresh oppo- 
sition on the part of his sister and brother-in-law. He 
shook with anger, seeing plainly how Sube bad laid 
a trap for them all. 

‘Be advised, Noel,’ his mother said to him; ‘you 
are an only son, why should you marry a barefoot 
girl, and oblige me in my old age to nurse a brat 
called PecccvireV 

‘ 1 wouldn’t consent to it for a moment,’ said his 
father, ‘and I should be doing a pretty injustice to 
your sister and Nicolas Fayet if I did. Fayet is so 
nervous about it that he has been here to-day to 
threaten us with heaven knows what.’ 

Noel had a difficulty in repressing before his father 
and mother the movement of haughty anger excited 


FORBIDDEN . 


229 


by his brother-in-law’s name. The Fay ets were, he 
perceived, allies of Sube, and spies in the home 
camp. Pushing his stool back against the wall, he 
hid his face in his hands. ‘ Poor Ninette !’ he said to 
himself, knowing that the difference between their 
fortunes increased every time it was looked at, that 
he would be asked to give the girl up, and that he 
w*as determined never to do so. As he sat there 
in the shadow a blaze of vine-faggots threw up its 
unstable and fugitive light from under the smoking 
pot of the household supper. But Noel did not 
intend to eat there. His heart was too full and too 
heavy, and he went out without a word of leave- 
taking. He walked across the Place wffiere it 
seemed to him as if he ought now, as on the 
night of his return to Le Bar, see Cratarola and 
his companion carrying away the empty coffin on 
their shoulders. 

‘ That was a bad augury,’ he said to himself. 6 1 
might have known that it was, but regrets are now 
useless. Late as it is I shall go down and see Ninette. 
I wonder what the farmer means to do? She had 
better go and live with her Aunt Nerta, for marry 
her I will, even if it costs me eighty francs to take 


230 


NINETTE. 


out the three respectful summonses against my parents/ 
— Aha — Monsieur Sube, this may be a blow for a 
blow, but he laughs best who laughs last/ 


CHAPTER XVIII, 


OPPRESSOR AND OPPRESSED. 

Alas ! what secret tears are shed, 

What wounded spirits bleed : 

What loving hearts are sundered, 

And yet man takes no heed ! 

He goeth in his daily course, 

Made fat with oil and wine, 

And pitieth not the weary souls, 

That in his bondage pine — 

To him they are but as the stones 
Beneath his feet that lie, 

It entereth not his thoughts that they 
With him claim sympathy : 

It entereth not his thoughts that God 
Heareth the sufferer’s groan. 

That in His righteous Eye their life 
Is precious as his own. 

Mary Howitt. 

When Noel reached Le Rouret the sights and sounds 
that met him were not such as to inspire either 
laughter or even much confidence in his own power to 
vanquish and overcome an enemy so formidable and so 
acute as Sube. Not only was it a fact that the farm 
was for sale and that its contents were to be distrained 


232 


NINETTE . 


for rent, but the little group gathered in the cheerless 
kitchen was even more significant of the weight of the 
blows dealt by Sube. 

The door stood open, and Noel walked in, guided 
less by any light which the family afforded itself, than 
by the sound of Ninette’s voice. 

‘ It is a crime ! it is a crime !’ he heard Ninette say 
in a voice broken by sobs ; and on entering he saw 
that the girl was lying on the floor with her arms round 
her yellow dog over whom her tears kept falling. 
‘ Look, what a crime/ she said, stretching out one 
hand to Noel. ‘ Ah, poor Toussaint, ah, my good, 
good dog !’ and then the girl’s head drooped, while 
with both hands she tried to raise her favourite's head 
on to her knees. Poor Biondino's ears were damp and 
cold — and all the curl had gone out of his immense 
waving tail, which used to turn like a plume over his 
back. His tongue protruded a little from a mouth 
that was pulled down at the corners. He breathed 
with great difficulty, though his ribs were immensely 
distended, and his filmy eyes barely turned towards 
Ninette in mute acknowledgment of her pity and her 
caresses. ‘ There are two days that the dog has been 
ill like this, and Uncle Ghiz who saw him to-day 


OPPRESSOR AND OPPRESSED. 


233 


says there is no hope, and that there never is when a 
dog has eaten a large sponge.’ 

i A sponge !’ said Noel, ‘you must be mistaken, he 
could never have found a sponge, for I am sure that 
none of you possess one: Toussaint least of all. He 
has probably some swelling, some tumefaction which 
will burst, and all may yet be well. Let me see, my 
poor old man,’ he added, kneeling down beside Bion- 
dino, rapping the dog’s ribs with his knuckles, feeling 
its belly with his fingers, and putting his ear above the 
lungs and heart. He shook his head as he rose again 
to his feet, and his face flushed with dark anger as he 
said, ‘ It is too true ! the sponge that he has swallowed 
cannot now leave the stomach, and the lungs are being 
squeezed and choked.’ 

‘ But look at his tongue,’ cried Ninette, 6 violet, 
purple, black : this dog has been murdered.’ 

‘ Some one must have done it on purpose.’ 

‘ It is a horribly cruel trick to feed a dog with these 
slices of sponge, which when they are fried in lard 
are dry, as well as crisp and tempting, but which 
when they have swelled cannot fail to suffocate 
him.’ 

‘Has Toussaint any idea when it was done V 
16 


234 


NINETTE . 


‘No, we do not know when he ate it, but it was on 
Friday that his chest began to swell/ 

4 Poor old Bionclino !’ said Noel, ‘yon ought not to 
have eaten it/ 

4 Ah/ said Ninette, 4 that is the worst of it, if Tous- 
saint could always have given him a good supper the 
poor dear beast might not have been tempted by 
hunger — but he was often hungry, my poor old dog, 
like Toussaint : like us all/ And, with a burst of 
hysterical sobbing, Ninette threw herself into her 
lover’s arms. 

Petronilla clasping her hands in bed repeated 
softly, 

4 Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us 
our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass 
against us/ 

The farmer, with his twisted, palsied mouth and a 
limp hand upon each thin knee, sat by the hearth. It 
was cold and tireless, while at his feet the poor old 
yellow dog contrived to gasp at intervals. At last a 
sort of shudder ran over Biondino’s body, and an odd 
stifled cry came from the animal, which almost im- 
mediately afterwards stiffened itself out. 

4 He is dead !’ said Noel. 


OPPRESSOR AND OPPRESSED. 


235 


r He has rendered his last sigh, '.said Petronilla. 

‘What will Toussaint say?' cried Ninette. ‘He 
has left the house because he could not bear to see 
Biondino’s agony.* 

4 You will not require to take your dog away with 
you,’ said the farmer gruffly, breaking silence for the 
first time since Noel's arrival. 4 Ninette is going to her 
uncle's/ he added, looking straight before him with- 
out addressing the remark to Noel in particular. It 
almost seemed as if from his enfeebled mind there 
had slipped the fact that Noel more than anyone else 
was interested in his daughter’s plans. 

More than six hours had elapsed since Firmin had 
made up his mind, on seeing the writ and bill of sale, 
to send Ninette back to her mother’s family, and 
the visit of Anfos Ghiz, who had likewise received 
an intimation of the sale, if it had not succeeded 
in saving poor Biondino’s life, had been at least 
useful in assisting the harassed and oppressed family 
to form some plans for their future. As regarded 
the farmer, Ghiz thought that even in his enfeebled 
state he might earn a trifle in Grasse by picking 
the lard employed in the perfume factories. There 
would be work for some weeks, owing to the crop 


236 


NINETTE . 


of jessamine flowers, mounds of which were laid 
down daily at the factory doors. Then it was 
further suggested that Francine the bakers wife, 
who was such a friend to Nerta and to Ninette, might 
probably give him a shake-down somewhere in her 
premises, so Ninette consented to the arrangement, 
and remarked that where there w r ere ovens her 
father would suffer less from cold in the winter which 
w T as fast approaching. 

The fate of Petronilla presented greater difficulties. 
Ninette longed to have her with her in the wizard- 
doctor’s house, but neither Anfos nor his sister offered 
to become the guardians of a bed-ridden old woman, 
whose son’s union with their niece, Eliza Rosingana, 
had been as unpopular with them as it had been 
short-lived. Ninette did not dare to urge her plea. 
The farmer seemed to have no plans and no re- 
sources, and it was left to Petronilla herself to ask 
Nerta to procure her admission into the Asile des 
Viellards at Cannes. Ninette wept to-night, as she 
spoke of this humiliating necessity to Noel, and 
then, crossing over, and laying her band on the old 
woman’s head, she said, 

‘ Vi, Maigrana, it cannot be for very long ; for when 


OPPRESSOR AND OPPRESSED. 


237 


Noel and I are once married you will have a home 
which you will leave never, never, never again ; is it 
not so, Noel?* And dashing her tears off with her 
hand she looked at her lover with a proud confidence 
in his affection. 

‘Certainly/ he said, ‘ the Mai gran a must live with 
us for at least as many years as I have already known 
her; and my memory of her goes back for twenty- 
two years.’ 

4 Good Noel !’ said Ninette. 

But Noel now felt obliged to break it to his be- 
trothed that as matters stood since the bankruptcy 
of her father many delays must take place before 
Ninette could become his wife, or her Maigrana his 
guest. 

‘It will take both time and money.’ 

4 To do what?’ said Ninette. 

4 To get married/ he replied. 4 My parents have 
refused their consent. My sister Rose and her hus- 
band, put up to it by the notary Fayet who is a mere 
creature of Sube’s, declare that they will take steps to 
prevent my father being a party to an improvident 
marriage.’ 

4 Sube ! Sube ! always Sube ! Sube who lends 


238 


NINETTE. 


money to distrain for it a few weeks after ; Sube who 
poisoned my dog — for I am certain that it is that old 
villain Alary who has suffocated poor Biondino with 
a sponge. Sube ! always Sube I* 

‘He is indeed,’ said Petronilla, ‘that unjust one 
who fears not God nor regards men.’ 

The farmer ground out between his teeth something 
about swine and usurers, but continued to show the 
same limp listlessness, while Noel went on to explain 
that he would have to take out those three respectful 
summonses against his father by means of which the 
French subject who is major, but who is under thirty 
years of age, is able to contract a marriage with 
the full knowledge but without the consent of his 
parents and his grand-parents, 

‘ But all that will cost money,’ said Ninette. 

‘Not only money but time. I was calculating as 
1 came along, we cannot be manied before the 
middle of February, at the earliest.’ 

‘How so?’ said Ninette. ‘It is so hard on 
Maigrana.’ 

‘Well, a month between each summons, if I take 
out the first one next week, would bring us to the 
twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of January ; and there 


OPPRESSOR AND OPPRESSED. 


239 


will not be more than time then to get all our papers 
in order and to get married before the end of Carnival ; 
but, haste , we are young, and we have time to carry our 
point/ 

‘Patience, patience !’ said old Petronilla. 

The farmer stumbled out of the room and stood 
for some time drawing in the smell of the moist earth 
and of the oak-leaves. 4 Le Eouret I’ he said to him- 
self. ‘ Well, there will be an end of us all before the 
last red leaves come down from its big oak/ 

Noel was as good as his word, and a few days 
afterwards, even before the sale had taken place at 
the farm, he told his father that Petronilla had gone 
down to Cannes, and that Ninette would continue to 
live at her uncle’s until he made her his wife. 

‘It remains to be seen/ he said, ‘how the sale 
goes. I saw some of the people belonging to the 
Credit Foncier, and they seemed to think there might 
be such good results from it as would leave a trifle 
over for Ninette : something which would represent 
her dead mother’s interest in the property. I find that 
wore this the case and were Firmin not ready to do 
her justice, I might sue him for the misguidance of a 
minor’s money; but Monsieur Vassal, warns me not to 


240 


NINETTE. 


expect this good luck, because the syndic of the bank- 
ruptcy is a creature of Sube's and chosen by him, 
which says everything against Ninette’s chances. 
The farm will probably go dirt cheap, Sube’s friends 
agreeing among themselves to bid low, and to keep 
down the prices.’ 

4 All that does not concern me,’ said the carpenter 
gruffly. 4 Amuse yourself with the girl, or without 
her, as best you can : that is your own affair — but as 
for marrying Miss Not-a-penny and bringing her here, 
I won’t have it — I won’t have her. Do you hear me? 
I tell you that the sale of a windmill in the moon 
would interest me just as deeply as the three respect- 
ful summons. You may summon me till you are 
tired of it ; it will just be the same after it as before 
it, and if married you must be to your promise , it 
will have to be without my consent ; that is to say 
without my money.’ 


CHAPTER XIX, 


KEPT WAITING. 

Dans 1 ame unie k Dieu c’est toujours le printemps. 

Le Cur€ (TAis. 

It is our nature’s strong necessity, 

And this the soul’s unerring instincts tell, 

Therefore I say let us love worthily, 

Dear child, and then we cannot love too well. 

Better it is all losses to deplore, 

Which dutiful affection can sustain, 

Than that the heart should, in its inmost coro, 

Harden without it, and have lived in vain. 

Such love of all our virtues is the germ, 

We bring with us the immortal seed at birth : 

Of heaven it is, and heavenly : woe to them 
Who make it wholly earthy and of earth. 

Robert Southey. 

Petronilla Firmin had really gone down to Cannes. 
Off the dirty Boulevard-du-Cannet there opens a 
wide street, connecting that boulevard with the pleas- 
ant district of Mont-Fleuri, and on the upper side of 
this road is situated the Asiles des Viellards with its 
chapel, and that large court from which a little covered 


242 


NINETTE . 


cart may periodically be seen to issue, when the Soeurs 
go out to beg for broken meat from the villas and 
hotels. 

Petronilla was well-treated there, was washed and 
dressed, and set on a chair in the sun, and always 
addressed as ‘ ma petite ’ by the kind-hearted women 
who devote themselves to the unsightly and un- 
savoury miseries of indigent old age. Hard had long 
been the blind woman’s portion in an out-house at Le 
Rouret, but in every depth there is positively a lower 
depth to be discovered, alas! by those who fall into it, 
and so, in this Asile, Petronilla missed Ninette, and 
Toussaint, and her son’s step as he passed between 
the house and the rosemary-bushes. She even missed 
Biondino’s long paws laid on her bed, and but for the 
services in the chapel, of which she had been so long 
deprived at the farm, she would have had no other 
spectacle than that of a score of old crones, all more 
heartless and discouraged the one than the other, and 
all as homeless as herself. 

It was years since Petronilla had been at mass, and 
she found in it a consolation for her life in this Asile, 
where the miseries of old age are all herded and 
parked together. Petronilla felt sometimes, as she 


KEPT WAITING. 


243 


listened to her companions, as if they had ceased to 
be women at all, becoming only units on the debit 
side of the Asile’s book of expenses and receipts. 
Only Christianity can meet the exigencies of such a 
joyless lot : can say to the starved heart that God is 
its strength and its portion for ever, can restore a 
healthy sense of individuality through the Spirit of 
that Master, who, though He gave His life for many , 
taught us that the hairs of each head are num- 
bered. God only can fill the space and the silence which 
separate us from each other, and though it is true 
that holy, useful, noble, and devout lives do live 
again in the race, the Divine Promise stands that 
each faithful servant shall have an individual portion 
in ‘the joy’ of his Master and his Lord. So Petro- 
nilla, with tears falling over her withered cheeks, used 
to sit in the chapel imploring Him who maketh men 
to dwell together in families to strengthen her son, to 
soften the Cresps’ hearts, and to give happiness to 
Ninette. 

The girl, living with her Aunt Nerta, only saw Noel 
at intervals, and now knew that she must wait with 
patience till the three months to be occupied by the 
three respectful summons should have expired. Her 


244 


NINETTE : 


father worked in Grasse, and seemed to be neither 
better nor worse in health, and his wife was never 
so much as mentioned between them. Old Ghiz, the 
wizard-doctor who always knew everything, heard 
that Eugenie had passed a very gay Christmas in Nice. 
‘Her career, as far as I have seen it,’ he said, 
has been that of Polichinel. She has starved her 
mother-in-law, beaten her step-daughter, insulted 
her husband, plagued the dog, and will ere long 
cheat the law, and provoke the devil. He may play 
her a trick yet. As for Ninette she astonishes me, 
and yet I have seen a great deal of character: good, 
and bad, and very indifferent.* 

In truth Ninette, having been carried over both 
the ignorances of childhood and the hardships of her 
girlhood, had now found in her happy affection that 
fire which if it does not consume certainly develops 
and refines a woman. All that Lacordaire called ‘ the 
metempsychosis of the soul * really form a series. 
They proceed one from the other. The ill-fulfilled 
duty, or the ill-mastered passion of the one stage of our 
life can never become the harvest, or the success, or the 
crown of the next. Men and women carve and deepen 
every day the lines of their own characters, and 


KEPT WAITING. 


245 


Ninette, early taught to love, to trust, to work, and to 
subdue herself, astonished even Noel by her sweetness 
and her strength. 

Noel’s Christmas had not been a cloudless one. 
Not only under the present circumstances could he 
not go to Le Bar to eat his pan de calende with his 
parents (where he would have met Rose and Nicolas 
Fayet), but he had to eat it, though baked by Ninette’s 
own hands, well mixed with ashes. The ashes were 
those of a large tract of his cork forest, where a mys- 
terious fire, breaking out at a moment when a fierce 
east wind was blowing, had done an amount of dam- 
age valued at several thousand francs. 

The whole of the circumstances of the fire were 
mysterious, but two workmen, said to have been pro- 
specting for manganese in the soil of this district, 
were blamed for having lighted a fire at which they 
had roasted their chestnuts, and of which the embers, 
fanned by the east wind, possibly set fire to the brush- 
wood. Noel’s partners, the brothers Paul and Henri 
Flory, were naturally discouraged, as well as puzzled, 
by a disaster occurring so soon after their entrance 
on the lease, and Noel felt it acutely, the more so 
that he was not really puzzled but plainly traced in 


246 


NINETTE ; 


this fresh misfortune the vindictive hand of Sube. 

The whole month of January passed in investigat- 
ing the causes of the fire, and Noel was only the more 
disposed to ascribe their misfortune to a deliberate 
act of arson because the workmen accused were so 
eager to prove an alibi. 

February came, bringing with it a tenderer green 
on the earth, and a rush of sap into the almond-trees, 
which put on their delicate blossoms, as if proud to 
show them so long before those of the cherry and 
the pear. 

Carnival was drawing to its close, but the old 
carpenter had not in any way altered his determina- 
tion, and, after the third summons, he would not see 
his son. 

But it was all too late to go back. Monsieur and 
Madame Cresp found Noel equally inflexible. He 
made all his preparations for his marriage, and then 
accepted a supper at Ghiz’s house on Quinquagesima 
Sunday, one kindly intended to do duty for that 
festival of les accor dailies which under poor Ninette’s 
circumstances had not been celebrated at the time of 
her real betrothal. 

Noel was the more glad to accept this invitation 


KEPT WAITING . 


247 


for the Sunday evening, as he found himself obliged to 
spend Monday in Nice, where Flory had given him a 
rendezvous on business connected with their case of 
fire-raising among the cork-trees. 

So Noel dressed himself carefully and tried to 
banish his cares for that evening at least. 

Even had he not been an enamoured bridegroom, 
and one who had encountered for little Ninette’s sake 
as many dangers as ever knight of old could have 
incurred for the sake of some queen of love and 
beauty, his prospective supper at the wizard-doctors 
house must have caused him to be envied on that 
Sunday by many. That was a house to eat well in ! 
Nerta had not kept a preshytere for seven long years 
without acquiring more than a rudimentary knowledge 
of cooking. Nor could she fail now to have under her 
hand materials worthy of her skill, since many a tit- bit 
found its way from the game-bags or poultry-yards 
of grateful patients to old Anfos Ghiz’s table. That 
was also a house to hear talk in I And the Provem^als 
love talk : better than even meat and drink, in fact 
they love it so well that they can at any time make 
themselves drunk upon words without the help of 


wine. 


248 


NINETTE . 


The Ghiz brother and sister were the almanacs, 
the registers, and the news-sheets of the whole under- 
cliff ; even of the wild, upland valleys, of the grazings 
of the Chierou, and of the great post-road from Grasse 
to St. Vallier. Except Notre-Dame-de-Laghet, no 
place had more visitors than their house ; there went 
as many persons to it as to a church, Firmin used to 
remark, and for this reason : that the doctor, besides 
the technicalities of his craft, the acids, and other 
bases which he sometimes mixed up in his head, like 
Nerta did the attributes of the saints, possessed a 
great deal of knowledge of the actualities of the dis- 
trict. To him were known all the prices of recent 
fairs and markets, and the guests at wakes and 
weddings; the gossip from the convents, from the 
carters’ inns, and from the elieep-folds ; with scandals, 
jokes, and ghost-stories ; to say nothing of last week’s 
railway accident, and of yesterday’s crime. Ghiz was a 
bit of an antiquarian, though his views on those mat- 
ters were less often listened to than his account of 
the altitude of the planets and their influence on the 
price of cassia and of jonquils. Nerta in like manner 
had all the saints in the calendar at her fingers’ ends, 
though she had to confess that her neighbours cared 


KEPT WAITING . 


249 


loss to hear about double-feasts, octaves, and the days 
on which fall the Quatre-temps , than they did for the 
true and particular accounts of who was bankrupt, 
and who was in love ; who was sick, and who had 
been brought to bed. In that house was edited, so 
to speak, the matrimonial gazette of four or five 
cantons, the brother and sister knowing all the 
places open to servants and all the servants open to 
places, while they heard and gave evidence on all 
the quarrels for forty leagues round. 

It was a thoroughly popular house. And then the 
music 1 Noel was himself no mean proficient, and as 
such he venerated in Ghiz a master in the arts of pipe 
and tambourine playing, second perhaps only to the 
celebrated Proven 9 al, Buisson, the musician who 
went up to Paris, and played there before fine ladies 
and princes. 


17 


CHAPTER XX. 


PIPK AND TAMBOURINE. 

A stir unusual, and accompanied 
With many a tuning of rude instruments, 

And many a laugh that argued coming pleasure, 

Mine host’s fair daughter for the nuptial rite, 

And nuptial feast attiring . • • • 

Samuel Rogers. 

He set his reed-pipe till his mouth, 

And played sae bonnylie. 

* The Ettrick Shepherd/ 

Ninette met her betrothed at the door. The bride- 
groom thought that she looked prettier than ever as 
she stood with her curls rippling round her head, while 
in her waistband there was placed a sprig of orange- 
blossom, of which there was enough in flower in her 
uncle’s garden to complete her wedding costume on 
Shrove Tuesday. 

After the first greetings, Ghiz interrogated Noel 
sharply as to his prospects ; because, in the practical 
French mind, profit ever goes before pleasure. 


PIPE AND TAMBOURINE. 


251 


Noel said that he was exceedingly annoyed at Flory’s 
loss, through the unexplained fire in their cork-wood, 
but, that if they could bring the matter home to 
Sube, they might be sure that they would not allow the 
broker to escape the consequences of his evil deeds. 

‘ Ah !’ said Ninette, 4 I know that it is silly of me, 
and I am glad that Flory cannot hear me say it, but I 
can sooner forgive Sube the fire in the cork-forest than 
the death of my poor Biondino.’ 

4 1 could forgive him .some things,’ said Noel, ‘if he 
did not oblige me to leave you to-morrow, and to 
spend the day in Nice. Flory thinks that he has got 
on the trace of a witness, and we are to examine the 
man together. He is a man called Auda, belonging 
to Gentil’s stables in the Rue de France. On account 
of the Carnival, it seems that his master cannot let him 
leave town, but that we can see him before twelve 
o’clock to-morrow.’ 

4 1 don’t pity you so much for having to go to Nice 
on the Monday of Carnival. They say that the cars 
are to be more beautiful than ever ; I should like so 
much to see them.’ 

4 So you shall, next year ; we will go together.’ 

4 1 hope you may be able to afford it,’ said her 


252 NINETTE. * * ~ 

uncle ; ‘but I have seen so many cork businesses come 
to grief, and so many houses shut, that I only hope, 
Noel, that you are entering on a safe path/ 

‘I think so ; we think so,’ replied Noel. ‘No one 
of course could foresee this demoniacal fire-raising. 
It has lost us hundreds of trees; but people have 
hitherto failed in the cork business either because 
they had no easy outlet or sure market for their wares, 
or because that market became flooded with cheaper 
work. Here the price of labour is so exorbitantly 
high that we should not dream of manufacturing, 
except at a saw-mill driven by steam. The packing 
only will require hands and carters ; but as we live 
within thirty minutes of Antibes station we ought to 
trade under good conditions, and Massier s works have 
given us a contract for our sawdust for packing their 
pottery/ 

‘ The workmen hereabouts will soon be in great 
straits, for the cork-cutters do not employ them ; so 
many vineyards are ploughed up on account of the 
phylloxera , and there are plenty of folk who leave 
their land waste rather than pay for hands to till it, 
or than meet the taxation that falls on them if they 
cultivate/ 


PIPE AND TAMBOURINE. 


253 


‘ Yes/ said Noel. 

‘And then there is the foreign competition in meat, 
and in Italian butter, and one does not see where it 
will stop ; but I suppose the towns devour it all.’ 

‘As they also absorb our people. Labourers no 
longer beget labourers — everyone wishes for a 
change, and the town fills as the farm empties/ 

‘ Yes/ put in Nerta, ‘ and a town which used to have 
one decent modest inn, where a man could go and 
have a chat, and drink a glass with a friend once in a 
way, has now six, seven, or even eight drink-shops, 
where idlers and spouters do harm to themselves and 
to their neighbours. I went to the bureau de tabac no 
later than this very morning, before ten o’clock ; there 
were already six men gambling in it, and the woman 
who kept it wished me to buy a lottery-ticket.’ 

‘Where did those people used to go?’ said Ninette. 

‘To church/ replied Nerta, ‘for the rich there was 
the drawing-room, the university, the theatre, and the 
club : but what consoled the poor? what rooms were 
warmed or lit for them? I answer, the church.’ 

‘ Modem progress had taken these things from the 
peasant. Those superstitions which you regret were 
really bad for his mind,’ said Ghiz. 


254 


NINETTE. 


‘And what has he got instead? Tell me if the 
play-bills of the theatre at Grasse are better for his 
mind than the flowers and the incense of the old festi- 
vals? Are lascivious pieces, nudities, and songs to 
make one blush, so very improving ? With all this, and 
with the conceit which the newspapers put into your 
heads, you don’t see what a miserable mistake it all 
is, and I for one am sick of 44 liberty, fraternity, and 
equality /’ 9 

4 There are as many aristos now as there ever 
were/ said Noel, 4 and I don’t know whether these 
new rich folk are not quite as difficult to punish.’ 

* Come, come I this is sad talk for the wine of les 
accordaillesj cried the wizard- doctor, as he placed on 
the table a bottle well-coated with dust. 4 That is 
good white wine of La Gaude, and it is five years 
old — we have made nothing this year that will turn 
out half as well : indeed, the yield is so small that 
all the drunkards in this canton w r ill walk straight for 
a twelvemonth to come. This/ he added, smelling 
the bouquet of the wine, 4 is a treasure; and after 
supper, we will drink to the future ’ 

Two neighbours now appeared, and the company 
placed themselves round the table. 


PIPE AND TAMBOURINE. 


255 


‘How are the planets V said Ninette, when they 
had nearly finished their savoury meal. She knew 
that nothing pleased her grand-uncle more than a 
reference, before a safe and suitable audience, to his 
more mysterious branches of knowledge. 4 VeV he 
would say, 4 others can apply a blister, or give a 
purge : a veterinary can do as much as that ; but 
what agitate men and women are the influences out- 
side of themselves ; messages from the firm earth, and 
from the rolling spheres, upon which, quite as much as 
upon meats and drinks, we all depend * 

4 Well, uncle, are the stars goodf 

The wizard’s brow darkened. 

4 1 have not time to look at them. You have no 
need to speak of them.’ 

4 That looks as if they were not all that might be 
wished,’ said Noel, laughing. 

To Ghiz it was evidently no laughing matter. ‘The 
heavens are the heavens,’ he said, sententiously. 

4 Oh, that is evident,’ said Noel, ‘and only people 
who are going to be married the day after to-morrow 
could be supposed to make a mistake about it and 
he put his arm round Ninette. 

‘Yes, lad; this is our great niece, and may God 


256 


NINETTE . 


protect yon and her, the good God of heaven, the 
Master and Father of us all, watch over you both,’ 
said Nerta. * You only want the cures piece of work 
now to make you one. You are loyal and tender, 
and as much one in your hearts as if you had been 
married for the last five years/ 

* Yes, yes !’ said the lovers, 4 it is very good to have 
known each other all our lives/ 

Ninette's eyes filled, and Nerta wiped hers with her 
apron. 

4 You have not told us yet what is wrong with the 
stars V said Noel, anxious to hide that he found the 
emotion of the women contagious. 

4 1 know/ said Ninette, 4 that if it rains on Shrove 
Tuesday we shall have the same weather for forty 
days, so I hope we shall not have a wet wedding/ 
Ghiz looked very grave ; indeed portentous. 

4 Never/ he replied, 4 never have I seen the heavenly 
bodies more curiously situated. The moon was 
eclipsed on the eighth of this month, when Saturn 
was near the cusp of the fourth house. To Saturn, 
which is just now an evening star, Mars is in trine/ 

4 In fact, his position may be called unsatisfactory, 
said Noel. 


PIPE AND TAMBOURINE. 


257 


4 Unsatisfactory indeed, and both Mars and Uranus 
in opposition. Jupiter is a morning star : but that is as 
nothing. To-morrow there will be an eclipse of the 
sun, with such a conjunction of Mercury and of Mars 
in the fifth house, as will bring panics, and wonders, 
and outrages, and great shocks to men, and to their 
rulers.’ 

4 If there came another war Noel at least need 
not go abroad again with the regiment,’ said Ninette. 

4 Since the stars do not favour us,’ said Noel, 4 1 am 
all the more sorry, Ninette, that I forgot, when I was 
on my way back from Rose’s house in Courmes, to 
insure our lives in the Stony Glen. I promised you 
to throw in a stone for each of us to ensure good 
fortune throughout the year; but I was so vexed 
with Rose for refusing to come to our wedding, and 
with that imbecillas her husband, that I forgot to 
throw in the stones.’ 

4 Hush I’ said Nerta. i It is mere blasphemy to talk 
of such frets and charms. I went a pilgrimage not 
only to St. Arnoulx, but even to Notre-Dame-de- 
Laghet and also to St.-Christophe-de-Malbosc for you, 
and you see that your marriage has come right, in 
spite of so many disputes.’ 


258 


NINETTE : 


i I love that St. Christophe,’ said Ninette. * I am 
always a little afraid of a rich saint, all red and 
blue, and with gold on the seams and hems; but 
he is really quite a poor man, all in common, brown 
clothes, and I am sure that he is a kind saint, for he 
carries that child very carefully ; so it must do good 
to pray to him.’ 

‘A truce to such silly talk !’ cried the wizard- 
doctor, rising from the table. ‘Noel, we will try 
the tambourine V 

Noel wiped his mouth, and rose. 

Lou tamhourein of Provence is in reality a long, 
deep, narrow drum about fifteen inches across, but 
more than thirty inches in depth. It is always highly 
varnished, has some ornamental carving on its staves, 
and is worn on the breast by a broad leather strap, 
which suspends it over the right shoulder. It is 
struck with a single short stick delicately tipped 
with bone. The galoubet , or pipe, on which the 
melody is played while the tambourine renders the 
bass, is the old classical reed-pipe of the Faun, and 
of Virgil's shepherds. It is about a foot long. 

As soon as the instruments were brought out, Noel 
handled them lovingly. 


PIPE AND TAMBOURINE. 


259 


‘ Where was this tambourine made?’ he asked, 
striking a note on it now and again, as if to enjoy all 
its deep-toned sonority. 

‘A lute-maker in Toulouse made that, thirty-seven 
years ago. Listen V and the old man, throwing the 
broad, leather strap over his back, stood up holding 
to his breast his much-loved tambourine. He seized 
his pipe with his left hand, put it between his lips, 
and began. His bald head was bent, his foot beat 
time, his blue eyes looked grave, and showed that he 
sought in his memory for the melody of some favourite 
tune. 

‘That is “La Belle Etoilc”* said Nerta, with an 
appreciative smile. 

Before long the old man stopped and laid down 
his pipe. 

‘I have no longer the breath that I used to have,’ 
he said sadly, as if the tune had recalled the youth, 
and strength, and sun-burnt mirth of the past. 

‘It is only because you have supped too well,’ 
said Nerta, half-vexed at her brother’s failure as a 
performer. 

‘Noel, do me the pleasure of playing us something 
worth hearing,’ said the wizard-doctor ; and slipping 


260 


NINETTE . 


the strap off his shoulder he hung the tambourine 
over the young man’s neck. 

Noel rose, stepped out a few paces into the room, 
and began. One must have heard these Provencal 
instruments well played to believe all the pleasure 
they can give, and the pathos with which they can 
render simple national music. With his eyes fixed 
on Ninette, and his face flushed, Noel played on. 
Every now and then, as he tossed back his head to 
draw a longer breath, the proud young face was 
one which Praxiteles might have seen in a dream. 
The old people watched him, as they listened with 
all their ears; the two neighbours leaned their elbows 
on the table stooping forward as if to catch the 
sound, and the young girl wiped off a shy tear, as 
the power of Noel’s music stole over her. It was a 
piece called, ‘ A pres la bataille .’ You first heard the 
strut and tramp of departing troops, then the roll 
of the guns, and the clatter of horses’ feet : all the 
rejoicing of a multitude who have fought, and won 
the day. Then, prefaced by a few heavy notes, 
came the funeral hymn of those who had gone down 
to Hades ; the valiant soldiers, the men for whom 
women would long wait and weep at home. 


PIPE AND TAMBOURINE . 


261 


When Noel had finished playing, there was a sigh, 
and a pretty long pause. 

4 Well, the wars are over for me/ he said, putting 
his hand on Ninette’s shoulder, 4 and on Tuesday 
they will not need to play anything so grave for you 
and me.’ 

4 No,’ said the wizard-doctor, 4 it will then be my 
turn to play you 44 Entendez-vous lou tambour ein” I 
will play it for you myself when you come back from 
church.’ 

4 But you are going to church with us to see me 
married,’ said Ninette, twisting herself on to the old 
man’s knee, and kissing him. 

4 Do that again, piuchcneto , and let us see which 
of us will tire of it first.’ 

4 1 won’t, unless you promise to go to church.’ 

4 Anything you like, anything you like ; and, if you 
are as happy as 1 wish you to be you will have 
everything this nasty world can give you.’ 

‘With Noel/ said the girl caressingly; and then 
the lovers went out into the garden together. It was 
very cold. 

* De careme haute 
De froid n’ aura faute, 


262 NINETTE. 

says the proverb, but the lovers protested that they 
did not feel it, and that the tune of 4 La Belle Etoile 9 
had taught them many things to say to each other. 

The following day was no Carnival holiday for 
Nerta. She baked and boiled, and had a hundred 
preparations to make for the wedding-feast on 
Shrove Tuesday, when the wedding would have to 
be celebrated early, so as to get the last gras meal 
over by twelve o’clock. 

After her work was in order on the Monday night 
she carried a pail of hot water upstairs for a foot- 
bath for her grand-niece. 

4 I dried your poor mother’s feet the night before 
her wedding,’ said the old woman suddenly as she 
held Ninette’s little white foot tenderly on her knee, 
and then kissed the meek face which drooped towards 
her. 

4 She was very poor too,’ said Ninette, pensively. 
4 It is a great pity to be so poor; but I wish that 
Noel’s people were not so hard to me. It is most cruel 
of Rose, because we were all friends together as 
children. But Noel says that it is all along of Sube’s 
intrigues, and that Rose’s senseless husband is now 
quite taken in by him. However, I will work.’ 


PIPE AND TAMBOUPJNE. 


263 


4 The lowest place,’ said Nerta, 4 is always open to 
us to fill; because, as my kind old master the Cure 
Audibert used to say, that is a berth which no one is 
prepared to dispute with you.’ 

‘Perhaps 1 may bring them round to like me.’ 

‘Have patience, mienne , it is when the demon has 
said his last word that God speaks. Let us listen to 
Him.’ 

4 1 wish that Noel had not gone to Nice to-day. I 
am afraid of Sube, though I do not know what 
harm in that great Carnival crowd Sube could well 
do to him. So perhaps the demon has really said his 
last word.’ 

Ninette fell asleep as the clock struck one on Shrovo 
Tuesday morning, full of the trust which is the 
amulet of simple souls. 


CHAPTER XXI, 


* 

THE CARNIVAL. 

4 During the licentious tumult of the festival of Cybele, the Romans 
imported from Asia the worship of the mother of the gods. Her 
festival, the Megalesia, began on the 4th of April, and lasted six days. 
The streets were crowded with processions, the theatres with spectacles. 
Order and police were suspended, and pleasure was the only serious 
business.’ — Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire* Chap. iv. (Note). 

*Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout 
All countries of the Catholic persuasion, 

Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about, 

The people take their fill of recreation, 

And buy repentance, ere they grow devout, 

However high their rank or low their station, 

With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking, 

And other things ; which may be had for asking. 

And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, 

Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, 

And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, 

Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos. 

This feast is named the Carnival. 

Beppo. Lord Byron. 

What a crowd and what a noise ! Noel Cresp has 
been in Nice for five hours, looking in every stable in 
the Rue de France for the man Auda whose evidence, 


THE CARNIVAL. 


2C5 


as promised to Henri Flory, he had come in search of. 
No doubt when Noel was in some stable beyond St. 
Pierre-d’Arene, Flory was searching in another stable 
between it and the Croix-de-Marbre, and in conse- 
quence of this game of hide-and-seek, the partners 
did not meet till past twelve o’clock, when they 
stumbled on each other at the corner of the Rue de 
la Buffa near the English Consulate. Flory said that 
he had met the man, but that Auda was in a great 
hurry, carrying the wheel of one of the painted cars 
which was required for the procession at two o’clock. 
Auda thought, however, that he would be free again 
after six, and had promised to wait for the two friends 
at the corner of the Avenue-des-Fleurs ; a spot which 
had the double advantage of being close at the back 
of the stables where he worked, and in a direct ine 
to the railway station to which Noel must return. 

In the meantime the best thing the pair could do 
would be to get their breakfast, and then to enjoy 
the fun of the Carnival till the hour of their rendez- 
vous with Auda struck. 

The Monday of the Carnival is in spite of a 
< bataille-des-fleurs 9 generally a less brilliant day 
than either the Sunday or the Tuesday; but by 
18 


266 


NINETTE. 


three o’clock the scene did appear to Noel and his 
companion as one of the wildest and most lively 
confusion. 

A gun was fired at two o’clock, and then the 
calvacade started from the old town on its triumphal 
progress of noise and fun. 

The town, broken loose from the conventional 
restraint of the other three hundred and sixty-two 
days of the year, is during these three days of the 
year mad and drunk. Every balcony in the Rue St. 
Francois-de-Paule both fluttered with coloured hang- 
ings and rang with laughter. The pavements were so 
crowded that the carriages full of masks only made 
their way with difficulty. 

What a crowd I red, blue, and multi-coloured ! 
6 Hep ! Hola ! Hee ! hee ! hee !’ cry the coachman. 
6 Hee ! hee ! hee !’ squeak the maskers, and then the 
confetti come rattling like grape-shot. What a 
noise ! Laughter, oaths, songs, shouts, the squeals 
and gibberings of the masks, with the creaking of the 
cars, make a charivari only drowned by the orchestras 
which the cars carry, and which bray and clash half- 
a-dozen different tunes, in at least as many keys. 

i Hep ! Hola I’ more masks ! this time clad in the 


THE CARNIVAL . 


2G7 


skins of beasts, bawling loudly inside their enormous 
bears’ heads, or gnashing with portentous boars’ 
tusks. Next to them come the cooks in pure white 
linen dresses and caps. They happen to be the six 
smartest young men of the Nice cotillons , but they 
beat on their saucepans and stoke at their fires till 
they succeed in terrifying the steeds of some 
knights, who in helmets and breastplates go caracol- 
ing alongside of the cars. One of the riders is dis- 
mounted and instantly seized upon by a couple of 
gigantic wet-nurses, who are hugging huge babies. 
They hand over their infants to equally gigantic 
PieiTots and seize on their patient. Some Indians 
push past with terrific spears and feathers jostling a 
man who plays on the tomtoms and tw r o women who 
have a banjo. A green frog four feet high executes 
leaps and bounds, scattering a flock of white geese • 
while ten black giants, mounted on folding stilts, 
suddenly press up to the balcony of a first-floor, 
and thence carry off the bouquets from a group of 
pretty, startled, screaming women whom they have 
invaded. As they stalk on confetti follow the giants 
in showers. 

Nothing is forbidden to-day and everything is per- 


268 


NINETTE. 


mitted ; the confused recollections of our savage an- 
tiquity and of the Lupercaliun feasts, are all revived, 
and there are neither masters or servants in this 
great hurrying, screaming crowd, which laughs, and 
jests, and pelts, and laughs to pelt again, and from 
which the dominoes and the masks have banished shy- 
ness or reserve. There is however a police present, and 
that police avers that there are from eighty to ninety 
thousand people in the streets to-day, and that this 
wild uproar, which began on Sunday, will be even 
more furious to-morrow, and will last, in all its madness, 
till the sun has risen on Ash-Wednesday morning. 

Noel Cresp and Henri Flory are immensely amused, 
both by the donkey races and by the battle of flowers, 
and by the gaiety and animation of this general sara- 
band. Having no dominos, they are a common butt 
for showers of confetti , with which at the close of 
three hours their coats have become whitened beyond 
all recognition. They are so much amused and there 
is so much to notice as the cavalcade returns over 
the bridge at the mouth of the river, that they for- 
tunately never perceive their common enemy Pierre 
Sube. His elbows are raised as he pushes his way 
along. His mask is in his hand, and his domino 


THE CARNIVAL. 


2CD 


is torn. His cousin Eugenie, hanging on his arm, 
has a long black and red plume in her hat; her 
domino is black and red, her eyes are bright, and 
her broad face shining. Full-blown with curiosity 
and triumph is she : for she is again on the pavement 
of Nice, and, if she meets there some old acquaint- 
ance, who might remark that she was not as young 
as she had once been, she can retort that she is 
neither alone nor neglected, but, on the contrary, has 
for her squire a cousin who is the richest man of 
her acquaintance. Nor is she likely to fare 
meagrely in the middle of all this carnival fooling. 
What should disturb such a legitimate triumph as 
hers? Not surely the remembrance of her husband’s 
ruin, nor of old Petronilla’s seclusion in an Asile at 
Cannes; not even the thought of Ninette’s beauty 
to which Sube had paid a momentary court. Ninette 
of course must be presently made to expiate that 
passing delusion of his. But this is Nice! in the 
high-tide of its Carnival, of the maddest and merriest 
days when it is noisy with the laughter of thousands 
of dishevelled men and women, with squeaking 
masks, with obscene jests, with eating and drinking, 
dancing and singing, with the oaths that lightly couple 


270 


NINETTE. 


the names of God and of Bacchus. It is Nice ! so full 
of sunshine and east wind, of flowers and music, with 
tens of thousands of pleasure-seekers among whom 
she can mix to-day well assured that Sube will pay 
for her fun. 

So Eugenie took her fill, and the cousins wan- 
dered from street to quay, and from the restaur- 
ant where they ate to the cafe where they drank, and 
thence, in a state of repletion, back again into the 
streets, and so down the Cours ; and they only halted 
before the theatre where Sube described to her the 
great fire of two years ago. Sube had been among 
the first to make his escape from the pit that night, 
but the recollection of its dangers was still so dis- 
couraging as to make him say that he will not go 
to any gala representations again in a hurry. These 
amusements, however good in themselves, are cer- 
tainly not worth the risk of a life: a life which, by the 
help of money, vengeance, power, and pleasure, Pierre 
Sube the broker still finds to be really worth living. 

As Noel Cresp and his partner walked up from the 
Avenue-des-Fleurs towards the station where Noel 
was to catch a train back to Antibes and Biot, the 
friends agreed that, though their day in Nice hadreally 


THE CARNIVAL. 


271 


been a most amusing one, the evidence which they 
had collected from the man Auda had been by no 
means worth the trouble they had taken in running 
him to ground. In fact, after six o’clock, Auda had 
appeared the reverse of sober, and had prevaricated 
a good deal as to his walk through the cork-wood on 
the day of the fire-raising: in fact, he had described 
the spot where the fire had been made for his break- 
fast of roast chestnuts, as now on this side of the 
stream, and now on that. 

6 He is a tipsy beast,’ said Flory ; 4 but the evidence, 
such as it is, must be followed up, and I am deter- 
mined, if I can, to disprove the alibi which has been 
raised by the man whom Auda says was commissioned 
to take him through the wood on that day. I shall 
remain here (being here, at any rate), and I wish you 
all joy, and good luck for to-morrow.’ 

Noel took his ticket, and went through to the 
platform, the crowd in the third-class waiting-room 
being so dense that he never noticed how, after 
Flory had taken leave of him, the man Auda, who 
was in the string behind him at the wicket, had also 
taken a ticket for the first station, and had followed 
him on out to the platform. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINGS. 

Where I should wed, there will I shame. 

Much Ado About Nothing , iii, 2. 

I am surprised with an uncouth fear. 

Titus Andronicus 1 ii, 4. 

All Shrove Tuesday as it was, and high carnival, with 
holiday-making both in Grasse and in Nice to draw 
crowds, a considerable number of spectators assembled 
before the door of the parish church of Le Bar to see 
the wedding celebrated between Noel Cresp, some 
time musician in the band of the 111th regiment of 
infantry, legitimate son of Joseph Cresp, proprietor and 
carpenter, and of Antoinette-Rosine Bensa his wife, 
both of the parish of Le Bar, with Andrinette-Elizubetk 
Firmin, legitimate daughter of Hugues Firmin, farmer 
and proprietor, and of Eliza Rosingana his deceased 
wife, both of this canton, domiciled in the canton 
St. Nicholas- de-M alb osc, in the arrondissement of 
Grasse, and in the department of the Maritime Alps. 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINGS. 


273 


Nine o'clock had struck; Rancurel the beadle, 
Ninette's friend since childhood, stood in the open 
doorway waiting to give the signal, while against the 
fair spring daylight there shone the painted windows 
of the choir, and there glimmered the pale tapers 
which a boy in a red cassock had just lighted. 

‘It ought not to be long now,’ said the beadle, 
looking this way and that across the square for the 
procession ; ’but we shall not have many people, and 
the alms-bag will be rather empty to-day, for so many 
people are gone to Nice, and I hear that the bride- 
groom’s family are among the number.’ 

The bystanders agreed that it was the best thing the 
Cresps could do under the circumstances, and they 
continued to discuss the union of the carpenter’s son 
with the bankrupt's daughter ; most sensible people 
agreeing that the Firmin family was not one which, 
were they in old Cresp’s case, they would care to 
adopt. But was poverty a sufficient cause for unpunc- 
tuality ? The quarter-past nine had struck, and still 
the procession tarried. What could have happened? 
Had the bride been taken ill ? Had the bridegroom 
shirked at the eleventh hour? Had the farmer had 
another fit? Perhaps it was only that the gown and 


274 


NINETTE. 


veil presented some obstacles, even to Nerta’s skilful 
fingers. 

Half-past nine, and no procession. 

Curiosity could endure it no longer, and ten little 
dirty boys started off in the direction of the wizard- 
doctors house, charging down the steep road from the 
town, like Uhlans on a reconnoitring expedition. They 
were followed at a distance by three matrons ; then 
from a side-street there also slipped out old Alary, no 
doubt commissioned by his master to report on the 
events of that wedding morning. 

The beadle was out of patience ; so was the boy 
in the red cassock ; and the cure, who had not broken 
his fast, felt a pardonable desire that the wedding- 
party should appear without more delay. The ten, 
little, dirty boys, scouts of the army of curious neigh- 
bours, halted at the place where the road forks, and 
when the three matrons overtook them there they 
had to confess that they could see no one coming. 
The matrons sent them sternly about their business, 
that of turning Catherine-wheels in the dust, and them- 
selves pursued their way to Ghiz’s dwelling. 

There a dismal sight presented itself. F rom the gar- 
den there came a confused sound of voices and ejacula- 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINGS . 


275 


tions, and in the kitchen Nerta worked with an oven 
which seemed to have chosen this morning for drawing 
with a fierce roaring sound. The kitchen was full of 
visitors, and fuller still of food. On the table was a 
collection of bakemeats, petits-fours , and apples, and 
before the oven was a goodly piece of veal, which 
filled the house with an odour of roast meat. The 
heat was intense, while through windows came in a 
hum of voices, and the strong scent of the blossoms 
on the thirty flowering orange-trees. Nerta had on 
her tippet and all her jewellery, viz., a hair chain 
with a gold clasp fashioned like two hands, and a 
brooch of a most funereal pattern, with an hour-glass 
in it, the whole designed in seed-pearls. 

Uncle Ghiz’s waistcoat was green, with coloured 
buttons, and a hat of portentous glossiness lay ready 
for the solemn moment when he should give his arm 
to his niece. The ‘innocent’ boarder Celestine snig- 
gered behind the sink, where she picked a feather to 
pieces, and seemed to be intensely happy. 

The wizard-doctor was so much the reverse that he 
went out, and walked up and down the high-road, 
with his hands crossed behind his back. 

Two neighbours were critically examining the linen 


276 


NINETTE. 


of the white tablecloth about to be spread, while 
whiter far than the linen was the face of the girl 
seated stiff and erect in her grand-uncle’s big chair. 
The comers of Ninette’s mouth were contracted, and 
she played nervously with the handkerchief in which 
her prayer-book was folded. The bridegroom was 
nowhere to be seen, and Paul Flory, the elder brother 
of his partner — come up from Biot for the wedding, 
at which he was to act best man — could throw no 
light upon his non-appearance. 

At St.-Julien-de-Biot, everyone believed Noel to 
have slept in Le Bar; in the Ghiz house everyone, on 
the other hand, believed him to have slept at Biot. 

It was now ten o’clock, and, as time was in itself 
becoming an object of value, it was proposed that 
Ghiz should give his arm to his grand-niece, and that 
they should go towards the church at the door of 
which Noel was, no doubt, by this time anxiously 
awaiting his bride. 

It was a pity that the ten dirty little boys could 
not have been utilised at this moment, to execute a 
flank movement upon the Place, and to have report- 
ed the whereabouts of the bridegroom. The end of 
it was that the bride’s procession was first formed, 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINGS . 


277 


then walked up to the town, and waited about, a 
spectacle to gods and men, till past eleven o’clock, 
when Ninette, having recovered from the swoon into 
which she had fallen, thanks to the combined effect 
of the chill wind and the strong revulsion of her 
feelings, was led back to her grand-uncle’s- house, 
and there, more dead than alive, was seated again, in 
her rustling white dress, in the high-backed chair. 

Then what a storm of voices, what suggestions, 
what complaints, what wistful looks at the baked 
meats, what cross-questioning of host and hostess 
as to when Noel had been seen last, and as to what he 
had said when he had parted with Ninette, after the 
supper in Ghiz’s house ! All that could be told was, 
that he was due at Nice early on Monday morning, 
there to meet Henri Flory, his partner, and to collect 
evidence with regard to the fire-raising in the cork- 
forest leased by himself and by the brothers Flory, 
Paul Flory who was present corroborated every word 
of this statement, and further explained his brother’s 
continued sojourn in Nice ; but all that did not in any 
way account for Noel’s absence on the morning of 
his own wedding. 

What could have happened ? Had he got drunk 


278 


NINETTE. 


at the Carnival, and, forgetting all about it, overslept 
himself among strangers who naturally would not 
remind him of the flight of the hours'? Had there 
been foul play? Had the train broken down under 
the pressure of the Carnival crowds ? One had run 
off the rails at Monte Carlo, only the year before. 
Had he had his pocket picked ? Had he been robbed 
and murdered ? And, at that suggestion, the sym- 
pathetic matrons began to weep, and Nerta, flinging 
down a duster and pie-dish, had barely time to catch 
her niece in her arms. 

Mid-day struck. Ninette was swooning, Nerta 
weeping, and the crowd of hungry visitors grumbling, 
when Paul Flory announced to the crowd his opinion 
that it was all too late for any wedding to take 
place this morning. They had better return to their 
respective homes, and kitchens. 

By degrees the sound of voices in and about the house 
lessened, as kinsfolk and acquaintance took their de- 
parture : their dissatisfied departure ; for they went 
home to eat improvised and scanty meals instead of 
the wedding-feast which Nerta had prepared, and 
for which they had prepared their appetites by pre- 
vious abstinence. Ill-disposed by their baulked ap- 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINGS. 


279 


petites, these wedding- guests did no doubt apportion 
praise and blame even less judiciously than neigh- 
bours are wont to do. They were needlessly ill- 
natured ; but of what would not a neighbour have 
been capable in this line, when he had lost his Carnival 
holiday, and had been sent home on an empty stomach ? 

But oh I the wonder and the pity of it ! 

Nerta, the semi-official nurse of a large district, a 
woman of piety and forethought, a help to all the 
country in hours of trial and bereavement, felt herself 
helpless as she contemplated Ninette lying only half- 
conscious in her chair. She managed, halt* leading, 
half lifting, to get her niece along the passage and up- 
stairs, where, in the darkness, the figure of the slight 
young girl with her white dress and floating veil 
looked like a ghost. 

When Ninette re-entered her room and saw the bed 
on which she had lain down only last night with such 
trustful and submissive prayers, and from which she 
had risen that morning soon after the dawn with 
such towering hopes of happiness, all her strength for- 
sook her and she fell insensible beside it. With wof’ul 
sighs Nerta then unlaced the bridal dress, in whose 
freshness she had taken so much pride, and she man- 


280 


NINETTE 


aged at last to lay tlie half-conscious head on the 
pillow. I say half-conscious because, though Nin- 
ette was lifted like a dead thing, that there was some 
consciousness in her brain was evident from the long 
pathetic gaze with which she followed her wreath 
and veil when they were hung on a peg near the 
door. The poor child began to shudder, though the 
sun shone boldly into this sad room, on the impotent 
watcher and on the half-fainting girl. 

4 Ay, ay/ sighed Nerta, ‘there has been foul play 
somewhere. I cannot believe that Noel is false.' 

Ninette gave a gasping sob. ‘I cannot believe it; 
on Sunday night he was so happy. What can have 
shipwrecked our happiness V 

In truth the hopes of this humble home had suf- 
fered shipwreck ; the ship to which they had trusted, 
sucked into the whirlpool of evil, had carried down to 
some sunless cavern the priceless treasures of simple 
and loving hearts. 

Towards five o’clock Ninette drank some milk and 
fell asleep, and Nerta, too disgusted to look at the 
many dishes that littered her kitchen, was digging 
her wrath into a bed of lettuces, when the cur4 ot 
Le Bar called to her over the rose-hedge. 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINKS. 


281 


She asked him to enter and to take some refresh- 
ment, but he had eaten his last gras meal before the 
great Fast, and only sat down, on the garden bench, 
with his finger in his breviary. He expressed the 
greatest concern, the more so, as the Cresp house was 
shut up and so it was impossible to-day to obtain any 
tidings from people all absent at the Carnival. 

4 Is Sube absent?’ said Nerta. 4 My mind misgives 
me that there has been foul play, and that he has had 
a finger in it.’ 

4 1 find from Alary, his concierge, that Sube went over 
to Nice on Saturday. His absences are so frequent 
that one cannot reason from his goings and comings. 
But as this is Shrove Tuesday, he is sure to be in the 
thick of any revel.’ 

4 Ah, to be sure : if he had murdered us all he 
would not all the less miss a chance of diverting 
himself, and of offending the bon Dieu 

‘Crowds of people have streamed off to those 
heathen games,’ said the parish priest regretfully. 
4 That humanity’s numberless beasts of burden should 
require a holiday I understand, but these godless 
crowds of dibar deurs are abominable. One might 

even hope that at Sube’s age men might be weary 
19 


282 


NINETTE . 


of larking and evil-doing ; but no ! and, before the 
Ash Wednesday bells ring, there will have been 
much breaking of God’s plain laws, to say nothing 
of infringing the more arbitrary laws of man.’ 

‘Ah! Monsieur le Cure, the world has not changed 
for the better ; and I do not know why we are to be 
governed by a bourgeois like Sube.’ 

‘Nor I, my good woman. He belongs to a guilty 
class, one which expects from the populace a subordi- 
nation it has never yielded to kings. It profited largely 
by the first revolution, and it is now proud to tease all 
governments and to obfuscate, by its petty passions 
and narrow view r s, all the larger interests of the 
country. But it is short-sighted, this society of in- 
triguers, which thus allows the principles of piety, of 
marriage, and of property to be attacked. It dances 
on the edge of a precipice. It has reigned for one 
hundred years, but its old foes the kings and the 
priests ruled for twelve hundred years ; and, if social- 
ism triumphs, there will come a catastrophe which 
will dispose of Sube, and of many Subes ; and, what is 
more, the priests will be there to see it. It may come 
any day, for deep is already calling unto deep.’ 

Having promised to pray for the poor young 


THE SAD VICISSITUDE OF THINGS. 


283 


creature upstairs the cur6 departed. He read in his 
book as he went but there was a plait between his 
brows. His mind misgave him that there was some 
criminal explanation of this broken-off wedding, and 
that envy, hatred, and malice had succeeded in 
wrecking it. He knew nothing of love between 
man and woman, but he could guess that a pang, 
like that of to-day's desertion, would slack all the 
pulsations of a young and eager heart. 

When Nerta told her niece of this visit, all the 
bitterness of Ninette’s sorrow revived. 

« He may speak kindly, but oh, what must he think 
of me?' 

‘He pities you, believe me; you cannot be to 
blame.’ 

‘ If he pities me, and thinks me a pure and honour- 
able girl, then what does he think of Noel?’ 

And Ninette writhed in an agony of mingled pain 
and shame, invoking Noel, if alive, to come, and to 
vindicate at once her fair fame and his own conduct. 


CHAPTER XXIII, 


EEAVr TIDINGS. 

All, yea, my God, my grief grows calm: 
What is there of despair or harm, 
While Thou art still Thyself ? 

In deepest hell I yet can trust, 

And worship Thee, O Thou All Just ! 
Leave me my love at least they must, 
Because it is myself. 


Be patient but till set of sun, 

And, whether life be lost or won, 

The sweet, clear night still cometh on, 

The stars upon her breast. 

The shadows pass, the splendours come, 

Consoled for evermore at home, 

For Love is Lord of all in whom 
We lose ourselves in rest. 

H. E. Hamilton Kino. 


Passion exhausts itself, and evening found Ninette 
in the comparative quiet of exhaustion. 

4 Go to bed and try to sleep,’ urged her aunt. 

4 Oh, think what a waking if I were to sleep I I 

prefer to watch, and perhaps ’ and she was silent, 

and then going to the window, she leaned out. 


HEAVY TIDINGS. 


285 


The poor have not always time for sorrow, which 
is so far in their favour, neither have they always 
time for official sympathy, so Nerta left her niece to 
return to matters of the house. 

Poor Ninette, feverish from the day’s excitements, 
longed for a breath of cool air, and yet shivered at 
the open casement. However, she remained there 
for some time, looking for her star, and unable to find 
it, either because the skies were still too light, or 
because her sight was dimmed by tears. She was 
not crying now, and, being but a poor, peasant girl, 
shaken in her hopes of a happy independence through 
marriage, she had to face the vicissitude of things, 
and to ask herself how best to earn her bread, in a 
dependence more or less unhappy. 

Five or six years ago, when times had been hard, 
and her step-mother’s hand harder, she used to think 
of this. She remembered sitting the greater part of 
one day on a block of fallen limestone with her chin 
on her hands watching the turkeys, while her good 
Biondino lay with his yellow face and his bright eyes 
blinking against her knee. She had said to herself 
on that day that, since Pepe was dead, but for Mai- 
grana’s blindness, she would certainly go away: 


286 


NINETTE. 


either to become a pastourelette or to get work in 
Grasse. Now, if she did not marry Noel, she must 
go away out of sight— but where ? 

Uncle Ghiz, who knew everything, said that the 
crop of orange-blossom was going to be very heavy 
round Le Cannet. Her father had some relations 
down in that district ; she might go there, and pick 
orange-blossom, and, after that, the rose-farms offered 
work, both at Mouans and Pegomas. She must go 
away, she could not bear these farms and roads, or 
her uncle’s garden with its dove-haunted oleanders 
any more. Her father would be sorry, she knew, but 
what could he do, poor and paralysed as he was, 
against stronger and richer people ? 

‘ Ah ! Noel ! you might have done so much for him 
and for me Y 

Perhaps if she went away Noel would miss her, 
and be sorry that he had allowed himself at the last 
to be worked upon by his father, and by Rose Fayet. 
If he was sorry and came back she would forgive 
him, because her love was the strongest part of her- 
self; but could she ever forgive his sister, or that 
wretch Sube who had made tools of the Fayets? 
She thought not, and yet we are bound to forgive 


HEAVY TIDINGS . 


287 


one another our trespasses. As she leaned out, try- 
ing to hope, and listening in spite of herself for 
footsteps, there stole up, through the moist sweetness 
of this February night, the scent of the orange-trees 
from which her bridal wreath had been cut. Their per- 
fume was so sweet, so penetrating, so overpowering, 
that she felt a faintness creep over her: her will 
seemed broken, like her heart : her hands dropped at 
her side, and her intolerable anguish broke up in 
weeping. And what weeping! Long rivers of tears, 
that first flowed unheeded, then were dried on her 
sleeve, and which then ran again as from a fountain- 
head, as from mysterious Couliafiou itself. 

Then she shook herself up. Why watch, and why 
wait? She had had enough of it ; more sorrow than 
she could bear or than she had deserved. To-morrow 
she would go away, and get work in the flower-farms, 
and at Easter, perhaps, she might get placed as a ser- 
vant. She shut the wooden window-shutters, crossed 
the room with uncertain steps, slipped down her 
petticoat, and threw herself on her bed. She felt 
under her pillow mechanically for her rosary ; it was 
no longer there, for she had left it in the pocket of 
her wedding-dress. 


288 


NINETTE. 


‘ Take away iny trouble, bon Dieu, et bonne Dame, 9 
she muttered ; and then fell asleep. 

She was awoke by her aunt’s voice, ‘Ninette!’ 
Ninette first raised her head, and then sat up in bed ; 
her arms hung limp, and her countenance was, as it 
•were, under the shadow of a bad dream. But was it 
only a dream, a phantom of the night, which had so 
dishevelled her hair, and made her eyes look heavy 
and bloodshot in the midst of her wan little face ? 
Alas 1 it was all too true ; the lost bridegroom, the 
broken-up wedding, the enmity of the Cresps, the 
malice of Sube, the abandonment, the mystery, the 
anguish, and the shame of so cruel a blow. As she 
looked helplessly in her aunt’s face, the whole scene 
of yesterday, instead of vanishing, took form and 
shape. 

There were her wreath, and veil, and the long, blue 
garter, destined to be cut in pieces for luck, and all the 
faded spring flowers. She put up her hand to her 
face, and, as she did so, her last waking thoughts 
returned to her : her wish to go away out of sight, 
and to be forgotten, if not to forget. 

4 Ninette ! Toussaint is here, and he has had news of 
Noel.’ 


HEAVY TIDINGS. 


289 


‘Of Noel! Just God! What news? and why 
through Toussaint V 

‘ Here he is.’ 

The hunchback lurched into the room. 

‘Toussaint I my poor, good Toussaint! for the love 
of God and of all the saints, tell me why you are here V 

Aunt Nerta, who liked to be spokeswoman, began 
to say, ‘ About half-past- four I heard a scratching at 
the door. I let it go on for some time, taking it to be 
a dog or a cat, till I heard a voice, a thing which the 
good God has not as yet vouchsafed to dog or cat. I 
opened, and found that it was Toussaint.’ 

‘Well/ cried Ninette, getting out of bed, and lay- 
ing her hand on the hunchback’s arm, ‘ well, have you 
seen him V 

‘ I have not seen him, no one can see him ; he is in 
prison in Nice.’ 

‘ In prison ! Oh, Sube/ cried Ninette, ‘ you are the 
cause of this and of all our sorrows !’ 

Nerta wruug her hands. 

‘But why? How? Toussaint, perhaps it is not 
true : Alary only told you this to deceive you, to make 
me angry, and more miserable than I am already.’ 

‘No Alary at all; catch me speaking to the man 


290 


NINETTE. 


who gave my dog a sponge to eat. My words with 
him will be cherries off this stick/ said Toussaint, 
twirling the celebrated bludgeon. 

4 But how do you know it? Has Noel sent me a 
message ? Does he think of me V 

4 Paul Flory, the same who came here to be best 
man brought a message, and would have brought it 
on here, only meeting me he gave it to me to save 
time. His brother Henri has telegraphed to him, and 
this is the message/ 

The pink paper, when unfolded, ran as follows : 

4 To Paul Flory , St.-Julien-de-Biot, by Antibes . — 
Noel arrested late on Monday for assault on witness 
Auda. Tell Ninette , and join me here , 122, Rue de 
France. Henri! 

Ninette remained staring at it, till Nerta taking the 
paper from her hand read it over again twice, and 
then went out to waken her brother, and to break the 
news to him. 

When a quarter-of-an-hour later old Anfos Ghiz 
entered his niece’s room, he found her weeping con- 
vulsively, though her mood changed to a sort of 
hysterical laughter as she reiterated her belief in 
Noel’s faithfulness. 


HEAVY TIDINGS. 


291 


‘There is only one thing to be done/ said the 
wizard-doctor, 4 that is, to bring home to Sube if we 
can a charge of having entrapped Noel and of having 
him falsely imprisoned the night before his wedding.’ 

4 It is a trap, a mouse-trap,’ cried Nerta. 

4 My mind misgives me,’ said the wizard, 4 that this 
Auda has all along been used as a decoy-duck. 
However, least said is soonest mended. We will lay 
all the evidence before Monsieur Vassal who is an 
honest man, and we will see if he does not think that 
this amounts to a case of conspiracy. I must say, 
little one, that I am glad matters have taken this 
turn. I had been more afraid of the Cresps, and that 
your gallant, though he had been to Ton 'quin, was 
neither more nor less than a coward.’ 

4 A poltroon! Oh, uncle, when Noel is only the 
victim of Sube V 

4 Yes, yes, victim; but it’s lucky it’s no worse. 
Better victim than accomplice, though to cool one’s 
bones in one of the cells of a police-office, because 
on a Shrove Tuesday no one will occupy himself 
with making the first 44 instruction ,” is hard enough. 
But, after all, one does not die of it.’ 

4 1 must go to him,’ said Ninette. 


292 


NINETTE. 


4 Not at all,’ said her uncle. 4 A pretty collection 
of rogues, male and female, will be waiting there 
this morning. It’s no place for you. The Florys 
will send you word.’ 

There was silence after this ultimatum of her 
uncle’s, during which Ninette wept so bitterly that 
at last Ghiz said, 6 Well, well, little one, if I can 
reach Grasse station in time for the half past six train, 
I will take it down to Nice. I may speak to char- 
acter, and at any rate I will bring you back word. 
Toussaint, on the other hand, will go to Biot and wait 
there till the Florys have something to tell you/ 

4 You might at least thank your uncle. For no 
one but you, Ninette, would he go so far from home/ 
The wizard-doctor stood looking at her kindly, 
and then, after patting his niece on the shoulder, he 
went out, followed by the hunchback. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


ASH WEDNESDAY. 

Wliat portents are these ? 

Henry IV. y ii, 3. 

The clock struck four as the door closed on Ghiz 
and Toussaint. They remained for a few moments 
in conversation and then went on their respective 
paths : Toussaint turning to the right, as he had to 
make his way down the valley of the Loup till he 
could strike into the Valbonne road, on the way to 
Biot ; the old man turning to the left, where, dark 
as it was, he hardly needed the help of his lantern 
to show him the high-road to Grasse, where he hoped 
to catch the morning train. 

When the door had closed upon them, and, before 
the sound of their retreating steps was lost, shout3 
were heard on the high-road, ‘ Paouro carnivale /’ 
with snatches of songs audible now and again, as late 
revellers returned from Grasse, or even from Nice. 


294 


NINETTE. 


Full of fun and wine were they, troubling with their 
tipsy merriment the grief-stricken pair in the upper 
chamber. 

The bed shook with Ninette’s sobbing. 

‘ Oh, the cruelty of these traitors who have betrayed 
an innocent man! It is they who have assaulted 
him ; it is they who have drawn him into a trap. 
It is a plot against his life. He had never done them 
any harm ; but Sube knew that my life was bound 
up in him. Oh ! Noel, my young love ! so true, so 
handsome, so loyal, so good : to think of him in prison 
on his wedding-day : and perhaps half murdered/ 
she added, with a gasp. 

‘Patience, ma mie ! Remember the Saviour on 
the cross, and be convinced that life cannot go on 
prosperously for us who are but poor sinners.’ 

4 Oh ! only on Sunday night we spoke of what our 
happiness would be when we lived together. My 
heart was as it were turned upside-down ; and not 
even to Noel himself could I have told all my 
thoughts on the eve of our marriage ;’ and Ninette 
turned from the old woman, flushed and trembling, 
and hid her face. 

‘ Peccaire l but how many miss their love in this 


ASH WEDNESDAY. 


295 


world. Have patience, mienne , all this will be cleared 
np. He will return, and life will be long enough for 
you to caress each other.’ 

‘But why am I here? Oh! cruel uncle, not to let 
me go to him at once dead or alive ; ought I not to 
be the first to meet him?’ 

‘But, child, have I not told you that you cannot 
go to a Nice police-court on Ash-Wednesday morn- 
ing ; that the very roads are unsafe for a chit of a 
girl like you ? Even if we knew for certain that he 
would be released to-day, or even to morrow, how 
are you to spend these days in Nice V 

‘But why am I here, when others may fail, miser- 
ably fail, in clearing him of this accusation ? It is an 
invention of Sube’s to revenge himself for Noel's 
beating. Depend upon it, it is this Auda who has 
assaulted Noel. I would give evidence; I would 
tell the whole story from the beginning, as to Sube's 
malice. The juge d' instruction would believe me.’ 

‘Have faith in God and in your guardian angels. 
With this morning light perhaps he may be freed/ 

Ninette wrung her hands. 

‘Ah ! Noel is alone in prison. How horrible ! If I 
was in prison he would visit me. If I lay dying, 


296 


NINETTE . 


his presence would make the prayers less sad, the 
grave less dark, the requiems and the psalms less 
funereal, death itself less cold. I must go. I will 
see his parents. We will go together. We will 
clear him/ And Ninette, rising from her bed, stood 
upright, and rigid, before her aunt. 

A really strong determination is hardly ever to be 
reasoned with, and in her mind’s eye Nerta already 
saw Ninette half-way to the house of the carpenter, 
who had treated her with such contumely. But she 
made another attempt to temporise. 

‘Wait at least till the morning breaks. We do 
not know if the Cresps have returned from Nice. 
Remember I am too old and stiff to run after you 
into the town ; that the maskers make the roads 
unsafe for a girl like you, and that the Cresps 
will hold you very cheap. Wait till the daylight 
comes. Promise me to wait till the day whitens 
and Nerta gently forced Ninette to sit down on 
the edge of her bed. 

The girl sat staring at Nerta s candle in a kind 
of sorrowful suspense. 

‘Do but promise to be reasonable, and not to 
humble yourself too much before these Cresps, and 


ASH WEDNESDAY. 


297 


I will go down and heat some coffee for you, before 
you start.’ 

4 Well, I promise/ said Ninette, in a dreary whisper. 

‘And at least put something over your neck and 
shoulders;’ and Nerta, taking up a little white bed- 
gown, offered to pull it over the girl's arms. 

4 Not white ! not white I’ cried the girl, shrilly — 
4 do not bring anything white near me I’ and she 
pushed the jacket to one side, and fell to sobbing 
piteously. 

Nerta seeing that consolation was not to be had 
in words sought it in action, and went downstairs 
to light a fire. Ninette, finding herself alone in the 
dark, first crossed the room and then threw open the 
wooden shutter of the window that filled its eastern 
gable. Day really had begun. A bird twittered, a pale- 
ness was creeping up behind the crags, and the dark 
mass of the town with "its high-piled castle reared 
itself grim, ill-defined, and almost portentous against 
the sky. The valley and the garden, so thick-set 
with orange-trees, were all shadowy and chill ; but the 
edges of the clouds had begun to flush under the 
first influences of the dawn, where slumbrous earth 

and waking sky seemed to melt into one. A distant 
20 


293 


NINETTE . 


bell rang, the notes of the peal scattering them- 
selves as it were along the west wind, and breaking 
softly in the air, till, ceasing to vibrate, they were lost. 
How wide and great was the world 1 and oh ! how 
cruel 1 How much in it for the rich and the heartless 
to accomplish, but how little room in it for the poor 
and the lowly, the simple and the loving ! When — 
oh, when would wickedness cease to crush us like 
that big tower which overhangs the town ? and when 
would the eye of God, like that white morning star 
now burning in the eastern rose, look into the dark 
places of the earth, and judge between the rich 
and the poor ? 

Often as Ninette, a little hard-working peasant 
girl, had seen the sun rise, never before had this 
daily miracle of his returning and victorious light ap- 
pealed to her imagination and to her heart. In her 
eager longing after justice this daybreak, so full of 
freshness and of power, seemed to her to personify 
the coming of a just and almighty Judge. She 
sank on her knees in the middle of the room, and, 
stretching out her arms towards the light, she prayed 
with clasped hands : 

4 Oh, my God, and you, Holy Mother, succour me I 


ASH WEDNESDAY. 


299 


Ob, my guardian angel, go to Noel and find him, 
and tell him to be strong and patient, and tell him 
of my love. 0 God ! defend the innocent now from 
those who are too rich and strong for us, and deliver 
us poor sinners in the hour of our death. 0 Jesus! 
Wary, and Joseph, aid us I* 

As she prayed the dawn kept creeping up into 
the sky. It was surely an answer to her prayer — an 
augury of help and deliverance. 

Tears ran over the girl’s face. 

‘ Lead me to him to-day, oh, my guardian angel,’ 
she sobbed, 4 and may God both turn his father’s 
heart to me, and judge those evil-doers who, attempt- 
ing to take his innocent life, might have made me 
a widow on my wedding-day.* 

The morning light coming in at the window and 
striking Ninette full in the face showed all her pallor 
and all her grave resolution. She meant to rise from 
her knees and to go out, but some overmastering 
power momentarily rooted her to the floor. 

There came along the ground a dull, rumbling noise, 
rolling nearer and louder, till it was like the passing of 
a battery of heavy guns when the drivers drive furi- 
ously. The air grew full of sounds, of groanings 


800 


NINETTE. 


that could not be uttered, as if the earth big with 
some monstrous birth of time was heaving and bel- 
lowing, and bringing forth in convulsive throes. First 
the ground rose, and next fell as suddenly, and then 
there came a breath as of a fast-sweeping tempest let 
loose in the four comers of heaven. Then the walls ex- 
panding made the rafters creak ; then the casements 
falling together rattled as if under a giant’s hand, 
and Ninette, feeling the floor reel under her, made a 
few hasty steps towards the door. Then, to the 
rattling noises of chairs and lamps, and mirror and 
binitier , and of all near objects falling to the ground, 
there succeeded a terrific crash, and two loud resound- 
ing thuds, as of the crags rent in twain, that made the 
earth and the air vibrate, and then echoed away 
among the rocks and hills. 

Ninette, flung forward by a second shock, was 
lying insensible across the door, in a white mist of 
falling plaster, when Nerta entered. 

‘ Sento Maire !' she cried, ‘there is an earthquake, 
and here lies Ninette covered with lime, and like one 
dead. This was all that was needed to complete our 
misery/ 

It was with some difficulty that the poor woman 


ASH WEDNESDAY. 


301 


was able to drag her grand-niece to the top of the 
staircase. As they reached it, the clock struck six. 

4 W e must get out, child, and none too soon. Luck- 
ily, your uncle is out of bed, for this house, split from 
tiles to cellar in the earthquake of 1854, will not 
stand any more such blows. Come down to the 
garden at once.’ 

In the garden Ninette accordingly found herself, 
where the doves were cooing in the oleander boughs, 
and some Lent lilies lifted their heads in the dew. 

4 But what has happened?’ she cried, looking at 
the coating of lime on her own shoulders. 

4 It is an earthquake, and the ceiling is cracked. It 
is only by God’s mercy that the roof has not fallen in 
upon your head.’ 

4 But what does it all mean V 

4 It means that the earth is shaken. It means 
that God’s judgments are abroad in the world. 
Last year did not a train fall over into the sea 
at Monte Carlo at the end of the Carnival ? and 
the year before was not the theatre of Nice burnt 
down on Ash Wednesday? And here is the earth 
opening because of the perversity of men.’ 

At that moment a church bell was faintly audible ; 


802 


NINETTE. 


the only sound that broke the silence at once so 
smiling and so august of that strange morning in 
Maritime Provence. 

‘ What ails the bells of Le Bar?’ cried Nerta, ‘and 
why have they not been rung for the six o’clock mass 
on this Ash Wednesday morning, when now if ever 
men just saved from destruction had need to put 
ashes on their beads? That bell is coming along the 
wind from Chateau-Neuf or from Maganose. I trust, 
child, that all is well at the parish church of Le Bar. 
Nevermind about the coffee ; let us start at once, for 
it is now broad daylight, and, while you go up to the 
carpenter's house, I will cross the square, and ask the 
cure’s housekeeper, or the sacristan, what ails the 
bells of Le Bar.’ 


CHAPTER XXV. 


THE FALLEN TOWER. 

Behind, before, 

This is no common waste, no common gloom. 

Wordsworth. 

Nerta stood among a panic-stricken crowd. A 
Proven5al crowd is always declamatory, but in this 
case there were no angry arguments, only vociferous 
wailing, alternating with pale-faced silence, while the 
scene passed in an atmosphere of the most choking 
lime-dust. 

4 What has happened V cried Nerta, who, as she had 
approached the castle, and its fatal tower, from the 
side of the public square, and not from the one on 
which it overhangs the lower town, had no idea of 
the causes of so much excitement. 4 What is it V she 
cried. 4 Has the church fallen V 

4 No/ said the sacristan, 4 it is the top of the eastern 
tower that is split. The front half of it came loose, 


304 


NINETTE . 


and, at tlie second shock, it fell into the town ; all 
the bells ringing of their own accord. Three houses 
are crushed to atoms under more than thirty feet of 
ruins, and rubble, and big stones ; those which rolled 
farthest have made a breach in the houses of the 
next street also, and gutted them. You can’t get to 
the place from this side ; you can only approach the 
houses from below, but even from here you can judge 
for yourself by seeing that three streets are com- 
pletely blocked. There is Angele Roustan, she will 
tell you what it was like here at six o’clock. Very 
mercifully, there were not already more than ten 
people in the church when the third shock happened, 
for its gable and roof then gave way in one place. 
We dare not now ring the bells for fear their vibration 
should complete the wreck.’ 

‘ Blessed be the mercy of God !’ cried Nerta, hold- 
ing up both her hands; and then, recognising an 
acquaintance in a woman who pale and scared stood 
sobbing among the crowd, Nerta threw her arms 
round her, and said (for this was one of the three 
matrons who had visited her yesterday in Ninette’s 
trouble), ‘ Oh, my poor Angele ! yesterday me, and 
to-day you ! On whom will the blow next fall V 


THE FALLEN TOWER . 


805 


4 Ah, Sento Maire /’ sobbed the poor soul, 4 we were 
all in bed in that corner house, not two metres from 
those houses that are now all in powder. We were 
all in bed, my husband and I, and our son Justin. 
Figure to yourself a noise like the end of the world, 
and, as if the earthquake were not enough, next 
comes the boom of the falling tower, and before you 
could count five a mass of stones comes crashing in 
on one side of our house and dashes out through the 
opposite wall. We jumped out of bed, and rushed 
half-naked into the street ; only amazed to find that 
no one was hurt.* 

4 Not hurt/ said Nerta ; 4 that is a miracle I* 

4 It is indeed ; for our house is gutted. The back 
and the front walls, burst in by the rolling mass, 
no longer support the roof, and the rafters and much 
of the furniture of the top story are now lying across 
the poor beds where we lay. You can see it, if 
you choose ; if you will come round by the lower 
streets.’ 

4 It is a miracle that you are safe.’ 

4 A miracle indeed I But, oh ! I have lived in that 
house for fifteen years.’ 

4 Console yourself, neighbour; you have your farm 


306 


NINETTE . 


all right, and the house will be rebuilt for you,’ said 
a bystander. 

‘But it was our house. 1 have lived in it ever 
since we were married, and since Justin was born ; 
and it belonged to us, and not to that rogue Sube 
— who owns nearly all the houses below the castle— 
and that little garden of lemons.’ 

‘He will have something to do to repair his own 
three houses,’ said another neighbour, who seemed 
to eye the mass of ruins which had overwhelmed the 
broker’s property with positive satisfaction. ‘ There 
is at least twenty-five feet of rubble on top of 
them now, and, if there is enough wood left in any 
one of them to make a match-box out of, I’ll buy it 
of him myself, as a souvenir.’ 

‘ Oh, no, don’t do that ; for it would be the begin- 
ning of a new fortune for him.’ 

‘ It would soon double itself in his hands.’ 

‘ No ; he will probably die poor, for he always took 
the two sure plans for doing so : he worked on Sun- 
days, and he robbed others.’ 

‘ What a rage he will be in when he hears of this I’ 

‘ Is he gone to Nice for the Carnival V 

‘ He went there on Saturday.’ 


THE FALLEN TOWER. 


307 


4 Trust him to be wherever there is a petticoat and 
a good bottle of wine, or a bacchanal going on.’ 

‘ But/ said Nerta, ‘is that miserable old Alary — 
who used to live in an attic of his house — safe V 

‘No one knows as yet. If he was up early he is 
all right, barring the loss of his frying-pan. He was 
not likely to go to church, for like master like man.’ 

‘ But, if he was in bed, and asleep, when the clock 
struck a quarter to six to-day, then he is by this 
time crushed as flat as his own pan.’ 

‘For shame!’ cried Nerta. ‘You are not then 
ashamed to speak so lightly of death and judgment. 
You must come from the other side of the town, well 
out of the way of the tower, or you would not be 
able to jest in the face of such an awful warning.’ 

‘ I am the cobbler who lives near the convent on 
the other side of the town, and, riverence a votre 
religion , I fear neither God nor devil ; and as I have 
a whole skin to-day my heart is light.’ 

‘ Beast !’ cried a woman in a white piqui cap, who 
had a terrified child in her arms; and then Nerta 
moved off to inspect the damage done to the church. 
She found the cur6 on its doorstep. 

‘ 1 did not think to see you again so soon,’ he said 


808 


NINETTE. 


recognising Nerta; ‘and who would have thought 
- of this yesterday V 

i True, Monsieur le Cure. What a judgment ! 
And who knows how many towns are in trouble V 
4 1 hope not. The earthquake shock was severe 
indeed, yet little harm w r ould have accrued from it 
in Le Bar had it not been for the fall of this fatal 
tower. I take blame to myself for not having urged 
the town to dismantle that tower. All the others 
have had their heads removed because they appeared 
to be dangerous, and this one, not being built on the 
rock, has far less solid foundations than the rest.* 

4 It was predestined, Monsieur le Cur6. But you 
are in your robes still, and they will be ruined ; they 
are inches deep in lime and dust/ 

i So much the worse for the robes. I was in the 
vestry, saying the collects de circonstance , while rob- 
ing, when the shock came. I ran out into the street ; 
and since the fall of the tower I have not been able 
to go back into the church. Luckily, this door is 
open ; for there is so much damage done to the one 
angle of the roof that the mere opening or shutting 
of the door might suffice to bring the whole fabric 
down. But I am going in now all the same to 


THE FALLEN TOWER 


309 


empty the tabernacle. One must prevent desecration, 
even at the greatest personal risks/ 

4 A woman must not touch or carry the Host, or I 
would gladly go in for Monsieur le Curb. As it is I 
can only pray for him and Nerta remained kneeling 
by the door until she saw the cure reappear with the 
Pyx, with which he walked away across the square. 
One or two women meeting him went down on their 
knees, and several men who would not pray stood 
to gaze at him till he had transferred the consecrated 
wafers to the safe keeping of a convent chapel on 
the other side of the town where the earthquake had 
not occasioned any damage. 

It was now time for Nerta to seek out Ninette. 
Her pride revolted, it is true, at the idea of doing 
what Ninette had done, viz., going to the house of 
the carpenter. The Cresps might well be pardoned 
if they looked down on Hugues Firmin, but the con- 
tumely with which they had ever treated her brother s 
home and his grand-niece, were outraging to all 
Nerta’s best feelings, and these Cresps, she said, would 
never know how much she pitied them for the 
disaster which had just befallen them. However, 
6he reflected that it would be well on this eventful 


310 


NINETTE. 


morning to waive all personal dignity, so she repaired 
to the Cresps’ house, where she was so far gratified 
to see that, either in honour of the day, or of the 
morning’s catastrophe, the carpenter’s shop was shut. 

The house-place, so to speak, of the family was a 
room to the back, looking across the ravine to the 
crags in the valley of the Loup. 

It was a pang to Nerta to mount the stair, and she 
positively dreaded having to ask after her niece 
from people who had so steadily refused to allow 
Ninette to enter their family. She was spared this 
humiliation, however, for the first thing that met 
her eyes on reaching the landing was Ninette. The 
girl was standing erect, and was speaking with some 
vehemence, one hand stretched out to suit the action 
to the word, and the other one laid on her heart. 
Madame Cresp was also standing, but she had her 
hands clenched, in the attitude of a person repress- 
ing a strong emotion. The carpenter, with his fingers 
shading his eyes, sat with his back turned to the two 
women. 

‘It is all that we can now do,’ Ninette said; 
‘though I do not answer for its succeeding; but 
it is just as I tell you : our misfortunes are yours, 


THE FALLEN TOWER. 


311 


and now yours are ours, and you know whom we 
have to thank for them both. It is Pierre Sube 
who has seized our house and furniture. It was 
Pierre Sube who got a bureau de tabac for my step- 
mother. It was Pierre Sube who lent that money to 
my father in order to ruin him. It was Pierre Sube 
who, by publishing my father’s bankruptcy on every 
wall, set you against me. It was Pierre Sube who 
made my grandmother homeless in her old age. It 
is Pierre Sube who gave to your son-in-law, Nicolas 
Fayet, the advancement for which he asked, and 
has thus made a tool of him in order to separate 
Noel from his parents. It is Sube who caused the 
fire at Biot, which he hoped would ruin Noel and 
make a coolness between him and the brothers Flory; 
and I am equally convinced that it is now Sube who 
has lured Noel to meet some stableman in Nice, and 
who arranged the so-termed assault for which your 
son is now in prison.’ 

4 It is very clear,’ said Nerta, turning to her hus- 
band. 4 1 put it to you if it is not very clear : and 
do you mean this old Sube to glory in your losses, 
and to carry off your son’s betrothed from under his 
very nose?’ 


812 


NINETTE. 


i Oh ! I should not marry him if he were alone in 
the world.’ 

4 Perhaps not, fji y but it is certainly not the parents 
of Noel who have done anything to ensure your 
fidelity to him or to them,’ cried Nerta, glad of this 
opportunity of speaking her mind. 

4 Oh ! as for that* said Ninette, stretching out both 
her hands with a charming gesture indicative of an 
entire absence of spite or rancour, 4 oh ! as to that y 
they know that they can reckon on me as long as I 
have a drop of blood. All that I have I would give 
for Noel, and now 1 am sure that his mother will 
accompany me to Nice.’ 

This was decidedly one of the victories of the 
vanquished. Nerta, who had not yet broken her 
fast, found herself to her great surprise swallowing a 
soup of lentils made by Madame Cresp, and before 
long she bade God-speed to Ninette and to Noel’s 
mother. 

The carpenter was of opinion that, considering the 
accident of the fallen tower, he should have work to 
do in Le Bar, so instead of going to Nice he went 
down with Nerta to look at the great wreck under 
the castle. 


THE FALLEN TOWER. 


813 


The first thing that the carpenter picked up in one 
corner of the ruins was a little child’s shoe : a relic 
of somebody’s happy home. Adieu now to all the 
rest of its pleasures, to the hearth and the cup- 
boards, to the family-bed, and to the baby’s cot, to 
the little hoard, and to the happiness of a dozen 
families ! 

The carpenter was the first to break the silence. 
‘ I should like to see the broker’s face when he 
comes back from Nice. The news will probably be 
known there by this time, and he will return I make 
no doubt by the last train.’ 

‘He will find that this Ash Wednesday has spread 
dust and ashes on a good deal of his property, and 
may God have mercy on the soul of that old Alary ! 
It begins to be very certain that his hour had struck, 
and that he is under the tower, and if there is any 
truth in the saying, “ Like master, like servant,” that 
servant must have had many queer things on his 
conscience/ 


21 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


UNDER THE RUINS. 

For sin’s so sweet, 

As minds ill-bent 
Rarely repent 
Until they meet 
Their punishment. 

Ben Jonson. 

The first few hours of this Ash Wednesday, those 
which necessarily elapsed before the company of 
infantry summoned from the garrison of Antibes 
could arrive and help to dig away the ruins, will 
never be forgotten in Le Bar. The loss of life in the 
town was far less than might have been hoped for, 
considering that three houses had ceased to exist, 
that five were in ruins, and that the roof of the 
church was so seriously damaged that one could see 
the daylight through its gaping rents. 

The fine weather had contributed largely to the 
safety of the public. Had Shrove Tuesday and the 


UNDER THE RUINS. 


815 


following morning been wet ones fewer persons would 
have gone to Nice for the Carnival, and more might 
have been crushed in their houses before six o’clock. 
As it was, nearly the whole population happened to 
be a-foot by that time, either because they had never 
been to bed, or because, being more seriously disposed, 
they had already left their beds for the sake of an 
early mass. A few, like the Roustans, had time, but no 
more than time, to escape, and, though six persons 
were seriously wounded, the only human being really 
held to be missing by mid-day of Wednesday was 
old Alary, the care-taker or porter of Pierre Sube’s 
house, who, living in one of its attics, acted as a 
guardian of his master’s bureau, and, as was farther 
supposed, as a spy on his master’s tenants and debtors. 
No one remembered having seen Alary return to 
his den ; only Angela Roustan had a distinct recollec- 
tion of having seen him crawling out of a side-street 
on the Tuesday morning, when all Le Bar had w r aited 
and had waited in vain for the bridal procession of 
Ninette Firmin and Noel Cresp. To-day the old care- 
taker had been searched for far and near. There was 
still a possibility, so secretive was the poor old 
wretch, that he might not have been at home when 


816 


NINETTE V 


the weight of masonry crushed his and the adjoin-^ 
ing dwellings to powder, and that, on seeing the 
accident, he had gone off at once to Nice, to his 
master’s lodging, in the Place St. Dominique, to tell 
Sube of the catastrophe, and to stop any notes which 
might have been left in the usurer’s bureau at Le 
Bar. Supposing that to be the case, the old man 
might still be as safe as his master. 

‘ If, on the other hand,’ said the doctor, who stood 
beside the mayor of Le Bar contemplating the ruins, 

6 Alary was in that house he must have been the first 
person to receive the weight of many tons of falling 
masonry.’ 

‘Death must, at least, have been instantaneous,’ 
said the mayor. * I can't doubt it. I can’t see the 
ghost of a chance that he should have lived to 
suffer.’ 

‘So much the better. The mass on top of him is 
twenty-five feet deep, and the frail rafters of these 
tenements are not built to stand even the weight of 
a basket of coals. When we get an organised cordon 
of workers he must be searched for; and then we 
shall be able to make some effect on the mass of 
rubble, but not till then.’ 


UNDER THE RUINS, 


317 


It was true. The little streets, not more than four 
feet in width, needed first to be cleared of the wreck- 
age that encumbered them before a way could be made 
for passing out the debris of stones and rafters. Such 
a cordon was formed by the troops. It was a chain 
extending from the scene of the disaster through the 
little, steep tortuous streets which lie under the shadow 
of the castle, up to the square in front of the said castle, 
which was the only open space available for piling and 
stacking away the superincumbent mass, when re- 
moved stone by stone from the top of the three 
buried houses. Hand over hand, fragments of beams 
and shattered articles of furniture were passed, alter- 
nating with heavy stones, or with buckets, and little, 
shallow hand-baskets full of tiles, lime, and stones. 
The labour of removal was enormous, because, though 
the troops broke up the heavier masses of masonry 
pretty quickly with their pickaxes, nothing could be 
removed, except by haudfulls at a time, up the choked 
and winding streets, where men, women, children, 
soldiers, and officials all wore one and the same coat- 
ing of thick, white dust. It came from the concrete 
of the walls of a castle which the Counts of Grasse-Bar 
had built six centuries before. 


318 


NINETTE. 


By day and by night, by lamp-light and by torch- 
light, they worked, no one dreaming of going to bed 
in Le Bar that night. And, when the morning of 
Thursday dawned on these strings of wan, dry- 
lipped fatigue-parties, it did not seem as if much im- 
pression had been made on the quantity of wreckage, 
though great piles of stones now crowded the Place 
du Chateau, and though the white dust was as thick 
as from a mill, disguising even the eyes and hair of 
those who worked in the thick of it. 

The next twelve hours, however, made a palpable 
difference, and by sunset they had dug so deep, and 
cleared away so much of the mass, that the mayor 
and the doctor, a newspaper reporter from Nice, the 
captain of the gendarmerie, the deputy, two engineers, 
and a commissary of police thought it right to be 
present. 

Before the darkness fell the stratum of the 
three crushed dwelling-houses would probably be 
reached, and the police authorities ought to super- 
intend the sifting and removal of matter that might 
contain the books and papers, nay, even the money and 
coupons , of the broker. That the body of his concierge , 
poor old Alary, would be recovered the mayor now 


UNDER THE RUINS. 


819 


made no doubt, and the doctor was at hand to give a 
certificate of death. So convinced was he of the im- 
possibility of Alary being alive that orders had been 
given to Cresp to prepare a shell, ‘ there being,’ said 
the doctor, ‘ no chance of recovering anything but 
a corpse and one which couldn’t be buried too 
soon/ 

‘The old man must be hereabouts,’ said the 
corporal of the 111th, who directed the labours of a 
picket of its men, digging with all their might and 
main. 

‘Not far off, indeed,’ said the doctor, advancing to 
the spot ; * for there is a terribly putrid smell/ 

‘ All the same,' said a bystander, ‘ Alary did not 
sleep on that side of the house. He slept in an attic 
on the side farthest from the house door and nearest 
to the main wall/ 

‘ But perhaps he was alarmed and got downstairs 
and was trying, poor old chap, to escape when the 
whole house fell down/ 

‘ That,’ said the doctor, stooping and picking up 
something, ‘ is not Alary’s and could not have 
belonged to him/ 

The article in question, when the dust had been 


320 


NINETTE. 


shaken out of it, proved to have been a woman’s 
bonnet with a long black and red plume. 

4 Sube’s last visitor must have forgotten it/ said a 
bystander, with a jeer, as the article was first held up 
and then handed to the commissary of police. 

* Perhaps she only pledged it to pay her debts/ 
said another man. 

By this time the doctor had knelt down, and the 
mayor would have done the same had not the odour 
of charnel from the ruin been too sickening. A young 
girl in the crowd fainted dead away. 

‘ Take away all those children/ said the cure, 
sharply ; ‘ this is not a time or a place for them/ 

But no one paid any attention to the priest. Ex- 
pectation stood on tiptoe, for the doctor and the 
corporal, after consulting and muttering together, 
pointed out something to the commissary of police ; 
the soldiers plying their picks and shovels, and 
working all the time as it were for dear life. 

‘ There is more than one dead body here for certain 
sure/ said Nerta; and she had hardly uttered the 
words when the soldiers with a supreme effort raised 
a couple of beams, which, deeply embedded in the 
debris , had defied their best efforts for the last 


UNDER THE RUINS. 


821 


quarter-of-an-hour. A thrill of emotion ran through 
the crowd, for a dark object was visible, pressed flat 
as it had lain under the covering rafters. 

4 Quesaco ? Is it a woman V 

4 Oh, horror I What a horrible mass !’ 

4 It is a woman 1 and quite dead. And what an 
abominable smell I’ 

4 It is horrible/ 

So it was. It was the body of a half-clad woman, 
stout and tall, bare-headed, and with a striped black 
and red domino clutched in one hand. 

4 Cover it,’ cried the priest. 

4 It’s Eugenie !’ cried Nerta. 

4 The spine has been broken/ said the doctor. 

4 Is it La Rourette V 

4 Where is the carpenter?’ 

4 Fetch the shell,’ said the mayor. 

4 There is one ready,’ replied Cresp. 

4 Where is it V 

4 On the steps of the church.’ 

4 Doctor, we must trouble you for a certificate ot 
death/ said the mayor. 

4 Who identifies this woman V said the commissaiy 
of police, after emptying the woman’s pockets. 


322 


NINETTE. 


4 1 do,’ said Nerta, in a sobbing whisper. 4 She was 
the wife of our nephew.’ 

‘I do,’ said a young man, pushing through the 
crowd. 4 I travelled some kilometres of the way home 
with them last night. We were in the same railway- 
carriage, having left Nice by the one o’clock train/ 

‘Do you know her? Are you acquainted with 
her?’ 

4 I had no acquaintance with her, but as she was 
half-tipsy and excessively talkative I discovered 
that the man who was her companion, and who must 
have been treating her with strong drink after 
the burning of the Carnival, was a certain Pierre 
Sube, whom I did not know by sight, but with whom, 
as it happens, I have an account to settle.’ 

4 Pierre Sube!’ said the commissary, turning to the 
mayor. 

‘Phew!’ whistled the doctor. 4 Do you mean to 
say that Sube is not in Nice at this moment?’ 

4 Not a bit of him. I travelled with him, and with 
this woman. \Y e all got out at Antibes station. She 
was slightly tipsy, and he was angry. I paid particu- 
lar attention to them, because, as I tell you, I had a 
reckoning to settle with this man, whom I had often 


UNDER THE RUINS. 


823 


heard of, but never seen till then. He was an 
infamous brute if ever there was one.’ 

‘ Who are you V 

4 1 am Henri Flory, partner of Noel Cresp, in a 
cork-farm at Biot.’ 

4 To be sure, to be sure,’ said the commissary. 4 St.- 
Julien-de-Biot : where the fire took place last month/ 

4 Thanks to Sube ; but, where he is, he w T ill have 
that and much more to answer for/ 

Again the crowd showed signs of strong excite- 
ment. An empty shell fastened to a pole had now 
been passed down through the encumbered street to 
the place where the doctor stood. 

4 You certify that this is the woman w T ho left the 
train with you at Antibes, and you are in the further 
belief that her companion was Pierre Sube, and that 
they were on their way home to Le Bar together?’ 

4 That is my opinion,’ answered Flory ; 4 but, as the 
woman is now muck blacker than her domino, you 
may disbelieve me if you choose, because I can only 
recognise that rag,’ he said, pointing to the domino 
which lay above the discoloured and flattened mass 
in the shell. 

i You are Henri Flory,’ said Nerta, touching him on 


324 


NINETTE. 


the arm as the young speaker turned away from the 
sickening sight. 

4 Henri Flory, and at your service,’ he answered. 

' Ah, then, my good young man, give me tidings, I 
pray you, of our ’ 

A man pushed in between the speakers. It was 
Hugues Firmin. 

Curious and excited as was the crowd it fell back 
a little and allowed the farmer to walk straight up 
to the shell. 

4 1 regret,’ said the commissary, 4 but you must not 
interfere with our discharge of duty.’ 

4 Decomposition is so far advanced that this must 
go to the cemetery at once,’ said the doctor. 

4 It’s the woman’s husband!’ cried the mayor, 

4 It is Le Rouretl’ cried Cresp. 

4 The devil it is I’ cried the doctor; and then he bit 
his lip, for there was a something about Firmin with 
his palsied face and his dangling arms that checked 
him. 

‘Monsieur,* said the corporal to the mayor, 4 we 
have got another now.’ 

So they had. Covered with dust it was hardly 
possible at first to say whose, or even what, this 


UNDER THE RUINS. 


325 


corpse might be, but time showed the body of a man, 
with a dark-coloured knitted vest loosely buttoned 
about the chest. A fallen beam had lain across 
that chest, both arms were stretched out, both hands 
had evidently clutched at the weight, and the mouth 
of the corpse was wide open. Pierre Sube had yelled 
out and gasped when the swift death descended upon 
him. 

The corpses were found about eight feet apart. 
The woman, snatching at the domino as a covering, 
must have rushed at and even reached the door of the 
room where Sube was caught in a death-trap. 

* Well, they cannot be buried too quickly after the 
examination of the broker’s body and searching of 
the pockets had been done by the police and the 
doctor who had spoken turned round, moving a few 
steps away from the shell, as if he felt that ounces 
of civet would not sweeten his imagination after 
such an hour’s experience. Nor was his disgust les- 
sened by the eager way in which the crowd pressed 
round to view these sad vestiges of mortality. 

‘Another shell has been sent for,’ said the mayor, 

‘ but stand back, can’t you V he added angrily and ad- 
dressing the crowd. ‘Don’t you see that that man is ill?’ 


826 


NINETTE. 


4 Who is ill?’ asked the doctor; and, seeing Firrnin 
fall, he ran to him. 

4 111 I ill! I never smelt anything so frightful; I 
don’t wonder he is ill,’ said Flory. 

4 This is worse than illness,’ cried Nerta, clasping her 
hands ; 4 and Ninette has already started for Nice.’ 

It was indeed something worse. Life seemed to 
be leaving the farmer. His arms were inert, and his 
face, which had at first been of a dark colour and fixed 
in a sort of angry firmness, now looking pinched and 
pallid had put on the hues and the calm of a statue. 
The doctor knelt down and put his ear to Hugues* 
chest. He shook his head ; then, pulling open the 
shirt and waistcoat, he applied his ear to the lean 
brown, hairy framework of the peasant’s breast. No 
breath heaved it. 

‘Nothing there!’ he said ; and then he took first 
one and then the other of the limp, leaden hands in 
his own, and felt the wrists for a pulse. 

4 Dead !’ he said, letting the right hand drop into 
the dust. 

The crowd gazed in silence, and only the strokes 
of a pickaxe broke the quiet. 

‘Dead I’ said the commissary of police, giving the 


UNDER TEE RUINS. 


327 


body a slight shake. * Te 1 Le Rouret is dead !’ said 
Angele Roustan. 

Yes, anger, grief, debt, and discredit were all ended 
for the farmer, for they had made an end of him. 

4 Dead !* And the bystanders, exhausted by two 
days and a night of terror, labour, and emotion, 
stood all stricken in the darkening street. For once 
they seemed to feel in all its keenness the solemnity of 
the event which had called before the judgment-seat 
of God both the usurer and his cousin, and the hus- 
band who for eight years had been more or less their 
victim. The doctor fastened down the glazed eyes 
which seemed to stare up at that broken castle-tower 
whose fallen stones had so terribly avenged him. 
Some one buttoned the clothing together over the 
naked chest, and for the third time that day the 
commissary of police emptied the pockets of a corpse. 
On this occasion there w r ere no valuables requiring to 
be locked up, only seventy centimes and two of the 
yellow Rabeau pippins. 

The bodies of the usurer and his cousiu had been 
got into their shells, but what was to be done with 
poor Hugues Firmin? He was a homeless man, but 
Nertafelt that that was no reason why like the Subes 


828 


NINETTE . 


he should be shovelled unceremoniously into the com- 
mon fosse . The Subes had always taken a prominent 
part in the agitation in favour of civil interments, 
and a civil interment was now to be bestowed on 
them. The shells, escorted by the commissary of 
police, were carried as hastily as possible to the ceme- 
tery, where the planks at the end of the common 
fosse were pulled up, and the cousins who had not 
been divided in their sudden and terrible death were 
rapidly covered with the clods before the darkness fell. 

Cresp the carpenter came to Nerta’s rescue as she 
remained wringing her hands beside the prostrate 
remains of Ninette’s father. 

‘ There are planks enough lying about here,’ he said. 

And so there were : among the jetsam of this vast 
wreck were beams enough to make an impromptu bier. 

‘We will have him earned to my workshop,’ he 
said, ‘ and do the best for him we can, till his daughter 
comes.’ 

Nerta thanked him with streaming eyes, but it was 
with great difficulty that, upon planks which had 
actually been part of the flooring of the usurer’s room, 
they were able to lift the body first over the ruins of 
the usurer’s house, and then through the choked 


UNDER THE RUINS. 


329 


streets, which in general are like black and winding 
brooks, but which to-day are as white as if they 
were snow-clad. The cure walking behind it re- 
cited (‘ Si iniquitates ’), i If Thou, Lord, should be 
extreme to mark what is done amiss, 0 Lord, who 
should stand. But there is forgiveness with Thee/ 
i They are all withdrawn,’ said Nerta, as she sat 
down in the gloom of the carpenter’s shop. i They 
forgot God, and in their terrible hour of danger He 
forgot them.’ 

‘ The grave, if it covers their bones, will not cover 
their infamy,’ said Madame Cresp. 

i They lived like brutes, and they were crushed up 
like rats among the rafters,’ said Cresp. 

‘ They have done with debt and vice,’ said AngMe 
Roustan. 

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Nerta. 

The cure shook his head sadly, and as he walked 
back across the Place he breathed more than one 
silent prayer. The nearer that any man either by 
his character or by his office approaches to the true 
priestly, that is to the true Christ-like heart, the 
more silent he grows, and the more likely is he to 

be saddened by the glib comments of the crowd. 

22 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


AT THE LAST. 

From too much love of living, 

From hope and fear set free, 

We thank, -with brief thanksgiving, 

Whatever gods may be— 

That no life lives for ever, 

That dead men rise up never, 

That even the weariest river 
Winds somewhere to the soa. 

Gulden of Proserpine. Swinburne. 

There is an old Prover^al proverb, 4 Morte la bete 
mort le venin ,* which takes it for granted that when 
a noxious beast has been slain its poison ends with it. 
But this is seldom the case with evil-doers ; they are 
proverbially long-lived, and, what is worse, their 
crimes will, as the Italians say, bear consequences 
long after their deaths. 

Sube's misdeeds were still active after the hour 
when, with a despairing yell, he had received on his 
guilty breast a portion of the tower of the Counts of 
Grasse-Bar. 


AT THE LAST. 


831 


Noel was still eating his heart out in that police- 
cell in Nice where during thirty-six hours the young 
soldier had suffered all that anger, surprise, suspense, 
and furious impatience could inflict on a man obliged, 
under a false accusation, to spend his wedding-day 
and night in durance vile. Nor were his sufferings 
mitigated by the thoughts of the weary woe which 
falling like a pall, must have replaced the wedding- 
veil spread over his Ninette’s gentle head. 

What had happened was this. His own and Flory's 
inquiries into the circumstances of the fire-raising at 
St.-Julien-de-Biot had through the month of January 
led Sube to fear detection. The broker had not really 
much cause for alarm, since the emissaries who had set 
the fire alight had been both well paid and well fright- 
ened by him, but conscience, it is well known, makes 
cowards of us all. He had the less to dread, even sup- 
posing that they peached, because the history of any 
F rench magistrate’s election has now become the history 
of a struggle between the interests of the common weal 
and his own electoral interests. The tutelary principle 
of the immovability of the judges formerly enabled the 
bench to subordinate all questions of local advantage 
and all personal interests to the higher considerations 


832 


NINETTE. 


of probity and of the general welfare. But this regime 
exists no longer, and, as it has been well remarked, 
both electors and elected would now rather see ten 
governments overthrown than sacrifice anything. 
Every magistrate depends on re-election ; the local 
committees which name also govern the deputies, and, 
with the few exceptions of those who dare to play for 
the very highest stakes, the deputies measure the sup- 
port which they will give to any cabinet according 
to the satisfaction which they have received as regards 
their own aims and those electoral interests to which 
justice itself is now made subservient. 

Pierre Sube had had profound experience of the 
growth and progress of this new system in his coun- 
try. It is by the influence of such men as Sube that this 
great and ruinous change in the French bench has 
been brought about. Sube was not only a proprietor 
in Le Bar, and a shareholder in many more or less 
honest concerns, but he had made a deep study of 
the manners and customs of universal suffrage, and 
of the criminal trade of those demagogues who push 
themselves to the front. He had therefore bought a 
house in Nice, where he was an elector, eligible for 
election, and where he was at one time a member of 


AT THE LAST 


333 


the municipal council. In spite of the numbers with 
which universal suffrage would seem to deal, every 
vote tells, as every card tells in a game of 4 grab 
and Sube, even in this recent case of inciting to 
arson, was pretty sure of being able to buy or 
frighten into connivance the most important of his 
fellow-citizens. If they pleased him and supported 
him he could repay them by moving to the front 
the whole phalanx of local freemasonry. If, on the 
contrary, they showed symptoms of calling him to 
account, he would begin to talk to them in the lan- 
guage of that still more advanced democracy which 
will one day avenge on the middle class their own 
guilty indifference to right and wrong. To the magis- 
trates he could hint that absolute equality was not 
yet carried out to the extent that intelligent French- 
men have a right to demand. Salaries for example 
ought to be equalized ; the judge ought not to have 
more than the schoolmaster; and to Nicolas Fayet 
he had already gone so far as to observe, that in- 
struction might very well stop at primary schools, 
and that a knowledge of languages or of sciences is 
unnecessary. To the deputies he said that their 
present programme was unsatisfactory, and he re- 


334 


NINETTE. 


minded them that those who exercise the government 
are now really dependent upon those who are governed. 

These comforting considerations, and the general 
consideration which they had earned for him, had 
enabled Pierre Sube to give his whole attention to 
Noel and to his betrothal rather than to any necessity 
for hiding his own guilt in the matter of the fire ; nay, 
the inquiries prosecuted by the unfortunate lessees of 
the forest had ended in suggesting to him a vengeance 
more complete and more diabolical than anything be 
had yet arranged. 

He began by putting the brothers Flory on a false 
scent. They belonged to Biot, but Henri Flory had 
been absent with the regiment, and he had a sanguine 
temper as well as a lack of experience. He and Noel 
accordingly started by suspecting the persons in- 
dicated to them, who had nothing whatever to do 
with the fire, and, when an alibi was proved for the 
men whom they had been led to accuse, they were 
puzzled, and thrown off the scent. 

This was as Sube intended. 

The next stroke of his policy was bolder. 

The puzzled lessees were promised more trustworthy 
evidence from a stableman at Nice. This Auda had 


AT THE LAST 


835 


really never been in Biot, so his topography could 
not fail to further mislead them, as must do the 
drunkenness which he was ordered to feign. Auda 
was to interview the partners, and, if he could catch 
Noel without Flory, he was to take him by surprise, 
handle him roughly, and then give him in charge 
of the police, as if guilty of the assault which had 
been in reality committed upon him. The scene 
selected for the assault must be some crowded spot, 
so the time of it was fixed for the Monday of the 
Carnival. In this way Noel would spend the eve of 
his wedding, as well as the wedding-day and night, 
locked up in Nice. Sube would be in town, himself, 
but lost in the motley crowd of masks, and he would 
take no apparent or ostensible share in the matter. 

Into this trap Noel Cresp walked : just as Firmin 
had walked into the loan a la petite semaine. 

We have seen the young bridegroom part from 
Henri Flory at dusk on Monday evening, and we have 
seen him also followed on to the railway-platform by 
the man Auda. The victim was alone, but Auda had 
an accomplice. After a few moments the latter threw 
two handfuls of tobacco dust into Noel’s eyes. The 
first handful startled him out of one of the day- 


836 


NINETTE. 


dreams into which a young man's fancies might 
likely turn on the eve of his wedding, but he took it 
to be a Carnival joke, the more so that the person 
wdio threw the powder was an utter stranger to him. 
When it was followed by another aspersion, much 
thicker, and at very close quarters, it blinded him. 
Auda at that moment gave him a blow in the ribs, 
which Noel returned with anger. The two men 
then closed in upon him, and kicked him severely, 
in the presence of a crowd, so disguised, so hilarious, 
and so rapidly shifting that it was impossible, under 
the gas-lights of the station, for a gensd'cmne , twelve 
metres off, to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. 

To that gensd’arme Noel was given in charge, 
the man Auda complaining that Noel had come 
to Nice to get satisfaction for an injury which 
he stated himself to have received in Biot, and that 
he had, under cover of the Carnival frolics and of the 
falling darkness, revenged himself upon his adversary 
by an assault which must have been premeditated. 
As proof of its premeditation, he pointed out that 
Noel had delayed assaulting him till they were along- 
side of the train which he fondly hoped would carry 
him out of the station, unrecognized and unpunished. 


AT THE LAST. 


?37 


And, to prevent any risk of recognition, Noel had 
even blinded his victim, and the bystanders, with a 
quantity of powdered tobacco. In proof of their 
allegation, they pointed out that Noel's pocket was 
full of this dust, which indeed, and to Noel’s un- 
mitigated astonishment, it proved to be. 

Noel’s fury through the hours of that Carnival 
night only gave place to hunger, and to a sort of 
sickening despair, when he heard the dawn bells 
ringing-in the glad day, which after so many con- 
tentions, and after three months of suspense, was to 
have made Ninette his own. 

On a Shrove Tuesday, and during this high-tide of 
merry-making, what judge would think of proceed- 
ing to even a preliminary 4 instruction ’ ? Henri Flory 
himself might even have remained ignorant of his 
partner’s misfortune, were it not that such a vast 
number of newspapers are produced in these winter 
cities that they find a difficulty in filling their columns. 
So between an account of the cars, and of a dinner 
of twenty covers, given by Mrs. Delia Dobbs (of 
Memphis), there appeared a statement that Auda 
(Baltazar), a stableman in the Rue de France, had 
been assaulted, and so belaboured, on Monday even- 


333 


NINETTE. 


ing, by one Noel Cresp, a native of Biot, at the railway- 
station, that it was thought Auda would even lose the 
sight of one of his eyes. * Nothing,’ the paragraph went 
on to say, ‘nothing could be better deserved than 
that the aggressor — who had come to Nice to gratify 
an imaginary grudge — should he under lock and key 
on this, the merriest, maddest day of the Carnival ; 
a Carnival favoured by the dazzling sunshine of 
Nice.’ 

Perplexing as the style of a newspaper paragraph 
generally is to the ordinary intellect, Henri Flory 
grasped the situation, and went off to the police- 
station, where the commissary was of course out in a 
domino ; but there, before nightfall, he learned enough 
to make him send off to his brother Paul that tele- 
gram which we know was delivered through T oussaint, 
and finally read by Ninette about three o’clock on 
the morning of Ash Wednesday, Paul Flory having 
spent the night in walking up with it from Biot. He 
told Ninette afterwards that he should not soon forget 
that solitary cross-country walk ; for his mind had 
leaped at once, as hers had done, to the conviction 
that this was a case of conspiracy, and of foul play. 


AT THE LAST 


889 


Only by fits and starts did Ninette, during the next 
two days, receive any news of her lover, or arrive 
at any conclusions as to the * instruction 9 made in 
Noel’s case. Every detail, as she acquired it, deep- 
ened her conviction that Auda had been used 
as a decoy-duck. The man in whose stable he 
worked was a friend of Sube’s. They had gone 
together, in the summer, to Corsica, to buy ponies ; 
they had both taken shares in the new race-course 
at Cannes, and Auda was at first too much afraid of 
his master to exonerate Noel in any degree from the 
charge under which he lay. The brothers Flory put 
strong pressure upon him to do so, telling him of Sube’s 
death, and quoting the saying about the beast and its 
venom. Finally, after prevaricating a little, Auda made 
a clean breast of it. His master instantly sought to 
invalidate his testimony, by saying that this servant 
had, three Sundays before, driven a handsome mare, 
the joint property of Sube and of Gentil, to Monte 
Carlo at a pace which, if it had broken all former 
records, did also break the mare’s heart. The 
wager was won by Auda, but, the mare being lost, 
Auda would have found himself without a place, but 


840 


NINETTE . 


for Sube’s generosity. Auda made a counter state- 
ment to this, and the ‘ instruction 9 might have gone 
on long enough, had it not been that Sube was dead. 
This smoothed all difficulties. The affair was dis- 
missed as one of those common brawls which might 
well occur during Carnival, and for which no one 
now cared in a city from which tens of thousands 
of visitors had fled, and which the earthquake had 
reduced to a state of haggard panic. 

There was plenty of other matter to fill the news- 
papers, and Noel found himself, at the end of a week, 
restored to liberty, and starting for Le Bar, in time 
perhaps to lay Hugues Firmin in his grave. 

The cemetery of Le Bar lies on the northern slope 
of the town, facing the rigid outline of the crags of 
which the lateral cliffs have evidently been in earlier 
days connected, but which now, rent and worn 
asunder by violence and decay, form a wall of forest, 
rock, and meadow, barring access to the inner world 
of the mountains. The little grave-yard is old, 
for Le Bar, once a Roman outpost and a feudal 
stronghold, had due succession of births and deaths 
before the Christian era, and behind its walls are the 
streets, where, as in the cells of a beehive, human life 


AT TI2E LAST 


311 


and industry, human loss and human pain, hum, and 
strive, and hoard, and groan together. 

Close under the southern wall, and close to the 
empty, yawning vault from which the bones of the 
Counts of Grasse-Bar have long been scattered He 
the graves of the Firmins, with five tall cypresses 
rising far above both the crumbling wall and the still 
more ruinous tombs and crosses. 

No one had been buried there since Hugues’ uncle, 
nine years ago, and in these nine years weeds and 
wild oats, and smilax, and blue periwinkles had 
made a tangle over a spot of which nothing has come 
to disturb the solitary peace. 

This evening it all lies in a shadow so dark that 
looking across the acre of graves you distinguished 
only the black mass of the coffin, the white surplices 
of the cure and of the acolyte, and the red robe of 
the beadle, and far away the chrysoprasus-green 
current of the Loup where it steals from under the 
bridge. 

A soft spring rain was falling, not heavy enough 
to put out the candles which flickered in the damp 
air, and of which the largest was grasped by Ninette. 
The girl, exhausted by the torment and suffering of 


342 


NINETTE. 


the week, looked taller, though her hair was hid- 
den by the little black shawl with which she had 
covered her head ; her eyes, with their meek 
musing expression were red with tears, and her 
mouth opened with a nervous gasp as she heard the 
first shovelful of earth fall on the coffin-lid. For the 
first time Ninette seemed to realise the total separation 
which death entails. It seemed to her as if it were 
from herself that this wild week’s work had also dis- 
united her. She had on entering the cemetery heard 
the dirty little boys say, « At least le mort is polite, 
and does not keep us waiting as the bride and bride- 
groom did on Tuesday and Ninette asked herself how 
long ago might it be since she had put on her white 
wreath and veil? Now she was all in black, and 
the workmen kept tossing in alternate shovelfuls into 
the open grave, while the soft, fine, penetrating rain 
kept falhng like tears upon all this misery and pain. 
She saw the choir-boy disappear with his aspersoir 
and stoup, and then all grew dark before Ninette’s 
eyes, a loud noise like the earthquake whirred in her 
ears ; perhaps it was an earthquake, or was it only 
the clods that made such a noise? Then silence 1 
Ninette had fainted, and when she came to herself, 


AT TEE LAST. 


843 


cure, and the candles, the bier, and the cemetery had 
all vanished ; for she was in Cresp’s house, and Noel's 
mother was putting some white wine to her lips. 

i It is white wine of Le Gaude that is five years 
in bottle,’ said the carpenter ; ‘ it will do her 
good.’ 

i This comes of going all day long without breaking 
her fast,’ said Nerta. 

‘ Vi! Ninette!’ said a voice, and the girl, sitting 
up, saw Noel standing in the doorway. 

Then, falling on her lover’s neck, she kissed him 
and wept aloud. 

4 This time you may invite me to your wedding, 
fifi' said Cresp, rubbing his hands. 

4 You will have to wait a little, however,’ remarked 
Nerta, sharply. 

Respect for parents is traditionary in France, so 
that Ninette could not indeed expect to celebrate her 
marriage till her mourning for her father was many 
weeks old. But she and Noel were sure of each 
others constancy and truth. They agreed to lose no 
time in going down to the Asile des Veillards, and 
there seeing the poor Maigrana who had so deep 
an interest-in the tragedy of Ash Wednesday. 


314 


NINETTE. 


4 There will be so much to tell her,* Noel said, 4 that 
one will not exactly know where to begin.’ 

4 Tell her,’ said Nerta, 4 that those whom God means 
to join man has not been able to put asunder.’ 


THE END. 


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